Sealed Away
by ashesandhoney
Summary: Set five years after Ladybug left Paris and Chat Noir is still trying to hold it all together without her.
1. The Jars

The room was full of glass jars. The shelves ran from floor to ceiling. Once it had been a second bedroom in a stylish flat but now it was a vault. The walls were lined with steel and the window was sealed. The floor and ceiling were reinforced. It had been expensive and it still didn't work perfectly. Even through the layers of plaster and metal and wood, he could still hear the drone of wings. So could his neighbours. They never lasted long. They moved in and moved out again. Maybe they could feel the weight of so many bits of evil gathered into one place. He knew that it dragged on him.

He didn't know what else to do with them.

Hundreds and hundreds of black butterflies beat their wings against glass jars with carefully penciled labels. Dates and names and descriptions because he didn't know if she would need to know when she came back.

He'd been collecting them for five years. At first, he had hidden them away in the empty rooms of his father's sprawling mansion. He had had tucked them into unused cabinets and under guest beds where no one would find them. His father wasn't the sort to have friends and he hadn't been allowed to let any of his stay in the house for any length of time.

He'd packed them into cardboard shipping crates along with the few belongings he considered his own when he'd moved out at 18. A video game console. Some books. His clothing. A laptop. His set of fencing foils. Five boxes of evil butterflies. A single letter still sealed. He hadn't realized how little he owned that he actually considered his own until he put it into boxes and watched a team of movers put it into a truck.

Leaving had been a fight. For maybe the first time, in a fit of anger and frustration over more than a year of being lonelier than he could remember, he had refused to back down. His father had made threats and tried to make him feel guilty and he'd been too angry to let it work.

His final year at Lycée hadn't been over but he hadn't let that stop him from leaving. He wasn't a child model any more. He was the kind of rising star who could afford an apartment in the XVIII Arrondissement without parental support. His name was its own currency these days. A different kind of fame than his fathers. Not a designer. Not a businessman. Just a pretty face. But people liked a pretty face.

For every morning he woke up regretting it, there was a message or an email from his father about some project or other that he was required to participate in. The little flashing icon on the screen always helped wash off the regret.

He had made friends who saved him seats in lecture halls when he was rushing back from a shoot. He invited Nino over when they were both off classes and they stayed up half the night playing video games and comparing their schools. Sometimes he went on dates but they never seemed to lead to a girlfriend. He refused to admit to himself why. He took modeling contracts that made his father furious for no other reason than that they made his father furious.

"You are half naked in this magazine," his father said in a tight angry voice after the first one. They were having a business lunch. Adrien had discovered that scheduling meetings over meal actually meant he could have some semblance of a family dinner. His father had dropped the copy of the advertisement on the table beside the plate of antipasto.

"They would have paid me three times what I made if I had been naked," Adrien pointed out, "Really wearing that much was a bad business decision."

"You look like a prostitute," his father said and Adrien bit back his next comment. Even at nineteen, he was still unable to hold his own in arguments with his father. But later, when another advertising contract came across his agent's desk, he took it. It paid better. He was finally able to add a vault door to that extra bedroom full of fluttering wings.

Adrien Agreste might have been happy. Should have been. Everything was going so well. His classes at the university. His modeling contracts. His freedom. His friends. It was all going so well.

Adrien was so close to happy.

Chat Noir was not.

Chat Noir was exhausted and lonely and hadn't gotten used to it. Five years later and he hadn't gotten used to fighting evil alone. Every time he transformed. Every time he looked at the chaos on one of the boulevards of Paris. Every time. He looked for her. He turned and scanned the rooftops and the crowds in case he was going to wake up from this nightmare and find her right where she was supposed to be: at his side.

She wasn't there. Over and over, she wasn't there.

She had been seen of course. There were jokes that she was Paris's greatest export. A twenty first century version of Lady Liberty. She had been seen in Montreal and New York, once in Maine, once in New Orleans. Another time in Florida she had been seen on Disney World's Main Street USA wrapping up and fixing the villain with her yo-yo and a smile. There had been a lot of cellphone video of that one. He had downloaded every single video and had them memorized.

He missed her.

He missed her so much.


	2. The Intern

"There's a new intern in design, cute little thing, Mathias called dibs apparently," Pietro stage whispered when Adrien came into the room. He said it like it was the greatest joke. Adrien sighed. Design meant that the poor kid was going to have to work with his father.

He dropped his bag on a bench and went to look at the rack of clothes with his name hanging on them. The room was full of models. He usually tried to be friendly but Pietro's tone had set him on edge. he already did not want to be here. They were going to get to stand around for the next three hours while each shirt was pinned and measured and repinned and remeasured until it was perfectly tailored.

This was the catwalk line up for the winter show and it was all dark wools. Plain and dull. The magazines would call the line 'classic' and pick out 'innovative' details like fancy buttons or cravats instead of ties or whatever stupid thing they had come up with. He just wanted to get through it and get out. He had a paper to write that he hadn't started yet.

"Are you in on the betting pool yet?" a voice said and Adrien turned from the charcoal suit in his hands to raise his eyebrows at Liam who had the most abysmal French accent of anyone Adrien had ever met. That list included every tourist lost outside the Lourve stumbling through asking directions. That Liam knew all the words just made his inability to speak more ridiculous. He was nice though and didn't just speak English and expect that everyone else would switch for him. He tried. Usually Adrien liked him. They had done a few shows together and he had been pushing his own agent to consider trying to find Liam advertising contracts when they were off show season and the runway contracts all dried up. Today, he considered hitting him.

Adrien didn't disguise his annoyance when he snapped, "No."

"Oh ignore him, I'm in," Pietro said, "Fifty on two weeks. She doesn't look like she'll last."

"Don't terrorize her," Adrien said though he knew it was hopeless. Terrorizing the new intern was considered a rite of passage in most fashion houses. Since Gabriel Agreste had the unrivaled talent of driving off anyone who might be considered kind, it was worse here. His design department was even worse than the models who wore the clothes. The stereotype of models who threw fits and cellphones didn't touch the reality of the Agreste designers. She was headed into hell and the models would just make it worse with relentless flirting and attempted seductions. They did it every time.

"You're so boring," Pietro said with an eye roll and Adrien ignored that as well.

The intern showed up during the fittings. She came in with Nathalie who had, of course, been tasked with giving her the tour rather than having one of the designers do it. Designers were more important. Adrien had always liked Nathalie though he couldn't imagine why she stayed in his father's employ. There had to be better jobs. That he was still working for his father as well was something he tried to ignore. They should both leave.

When the door opened, half the conversation in the room fell quiet. They had all been sharing theories about her that had grated on Adrien's nerves. They hadn't even met her yet. He was facing the wall while the tailor fussed with the length of his pants and a pair of the lower ranked designers stood around and debated shoe choices.

"Americano! How many guns do you own? Did you order any freedom fries?" Liam laughed in English before she had even been introduced.

Adrien turned around, prepared to step in and say something to him or to Mathias or to whoever decided to be an asshole next. They had driven an intern out of the room crying once and if it took losing friends to stop them from doing it again, he wasn't sure he cared. He paused when he saw her.

Familiar. So familiar.

"Listen, Irish. I was born in this city which is more than you can say," she said in perfect French. Not just perfect French, local French. He stared.

"Marinette," he said aloud.

For a moment her name had escaped him but he remembered her. She had sat behind him in class, had been class president, her parents owned a bakery up until the Disaster had destroyed that entire block. Alya's best friend with pigtails and clumsy feet and a clever mind. The pig tails were gone. She wore her hair long now and it fell below her shoulders. She was dressed up for her first day at a new job. Heels and a polka dot skirt and a black jacket over a bright pink shirt.

There was a stutter of hesitation before she said, "Hello... Adrien."

"Liam?" Adrien said. He was smiling, smiling wider than he had in a long time and he wasn't quite sure why. He didn't take his eyes off of her as he waved a hand at Liam, "I take it back, I'll put 200 down that she'll make it to the end of the contract."

He stepped down off the platform and crossed the room to her. The pins in his pants scratched at his ankle and his team squawked at him to get back into place. He ignored it all. When he got to her he wasn't sure what he had been planning to do. Hug her? He couldn't do that. He held out a hand and she shook it once with a little smile before letting go and wrapping her fingers more tightly around a binder she held in her arms.

"200 what?" she asked.

"Euro," he said, "We take bets on the new interns. Pietro there thinks you'll last less than two weeks."

She shot a look at Pietro who tried for a haughty expression but ended up looking like a petulant child. Adrien grinned at him and then at Marinette. She hadn't gotten any taller. Her eyes were still bright blue but not as carefree as they had been when she had been younger. To say she looked older was stupid. Of course she looked older but older suited her.

"Congratulations. Your portfolio must be excellent," Adrien said and he knew it was an awkward thing to say. Everyone was watching them and that made him nervous. Being watched on the runway was far different than being watched like this. He said it again because the first time wasn't awkward enough and his idiot mouth needed to make it worse, "Congratulations."

"Thank you," she said and then his team was crossing their arms and watching him like he was throwing off the entire day and her tour was moving on. He was an idiot. He climbed back up onto the platform and put all his attention on standing still and not locking his knees funny and holding his shoulders properly so that the clothing fit the way it was meant to.

His mind kept drifting back to her. It was almost a relief to have someone who wasn't Ladybug pull on his attention like this.

Marinette had left, as had many people, after the Disaster. In their neighbourhood the disaster was its own event. It was simply the Disaster. In a city that saw more destruction than most, that day had been worse than all the others. An akuma that had set things on fire had nearly destroyed everything. Adrien could still remember it. The smell of that many buildings burning. The smoke in the air. The people melting like candles into the street.

He shook away those memories. The worst one wormed its way past his defenses as though just seeing an old classmate was enough to open doors he had locked shut. His mind swirled around the expression on Ladybug's face when she'd realized how far the fires had spread.

He was almost grateful when the woman working on his sleeve stabbed him with a straight pin. The pain pulled him out of the memories. She was apologizing profusely and offering to run off and get bandaids and convincing her that he was fine was a distraction on its own. By the time he was heading home, he'd almost convinced himself that the whole memory had never happened.

It was a lie he told himself regularly but couldn't quite believe.


	3. The Park

Adrien skidded out of class and took off at a run across campus.

He looked ridiculous. Old running shoes, designer jeans, a long black coat flapping around him and a full face of very carefully contoured makeup designed for black and white film. He had rushed from a photo shoot to class and hadn't had time to wash his face or change his clothes. The jeans really shouldn't have even been allowed off set. They cost more than some cars but he had planned to have them back before anyone noticed. The teacher had glared, because after all that, he had gotten caught in the metro and been late anyways.

It wasn't a good day.

People turned to stare as he ran by as fast as he could. He didn't stop except to hand back a book he bumped out of a girl's hand. She gave him that starstruck look that people gave celebrities. He hated that look. No one who looked at him like that saw a person. They saw a pretty picture walking around. He didn't wait for her to ask for an autograph. He wheeled around and kept going.

"I hate this campus Plagg," he muttered. Plagg was tucked into one of the deep pockets in the coat. He had chosen the coat for the pockets.

"Me too. No good cheese," Plagg's voice was muffled by the fabric.

Adrien didn't really care about cheese. He hated the campus because at peak hours it lacked places where he could hide and transform and not be caught. It was four o'clock in the afternoon and the rush hour was starting. He needed to get out of the crowds trying to leave campus and change. He wasn't fast enough like this. Adrien was never enough on his own. He needed to be Chat Noir before he could do any good.

The news of the Akuma attack was still just rumours. Comments on twitter feeds and blurry photos on Instagram but he had learned that he needed to get there while it was still that small. He didn't have the power to fix it. His power was destruction. He couldn't put buildings back up once they'd fallen down.

So Chat Noir needed to be there before it got that bad.

It might have been possible if only his fellow underclassmen didn't stand around in herds. They were as immovable as cattle and darting through them was like running an obstacle course.

He finally made it out off campus and ducked into an alley where he could change. The strength that came with being Chat Noir woke him up like he'd been asleep all day and was only now truly himself. Without people in the way, without having to worry about all the eyes that followed the famous boy across campus, he could truly move. He vaulted rooftops. He caught himself with claws sharp enough to bite into roof tiles and leave gouges.

And he got there fast.

And found nothing.

A city park in perfect order. There had been blurry photos of a car with a smashed in roof, of a man in a red suit floating above that fountain, it had been this park. He had recognized the fountain and the children's play set. He had come here when he was little. It had been the same place.

He was sure. It had been this park.

But here, everything was fine.

He dropped down to sit on the edge of the roof he'd stopped on. His feet dangled and he drummed his heels against the eaves. He twirled his baton with one hand and scanned the length of the park as though it were hiding secrets. The grass wasn't torn up. The slide wasn't turned sideways. He dropped down to the grass and walked through the pristine park. Even the flowers were all in bloom. It was a post card.

"Even the truly brilliant can make mistakes," he said to no one.

Chat Noir checked another three parks in the neighbourhood but none of them were destroyed either. Paris was bright and happy and fine around him. It was a relief to have it be a hoax or a mistake. His nerves were jangled but it was still a relief.

He trudged home as Adrien, Plagg complaining in his ear until he bought a round of camembert and just dropped the entire thing into his pocket. His coat was going to smell like cheese but it made Plagg happy.

"What happened today?" he asked.

"You took a scenic walk through half the parks in the city?" Plagg suggested between mouthfuls of food.

"Not what I meant, I was so sure that was the right place," he said as he slouched against the wall to look at the pictures he'd seen in class and figure out what he had missed. He had checked half of Paris. There wasn't an attack anywhere. It must have been a hoax or old photos being reposted and he wanted to know who and why.

The phone was covered in notifications. His alerts were all flashing. Little red numbers counting up on the news feeds he had set up as well as all his social networks. A text from Alya came in before he could open anything else.

"Did you see it!?" it read.

Alya wasn't so much his friend as Nino's friend but he liked her. She was the kind of person who carried enthusiasm like a communicable disease. He didn't go to the same school as she did and only saw her when they all hung out together. Adrien pretended not to notice how hard she and Nino were not-dating.

She studied journalism, was a semi-professional dog walker, all while running three blogs and a youtube channel. That didn't even touch on the volunteer work she somehow managed to be constantly doing. Even though he was a secret superhero on top of modeling contracts and his course work, she still seemed to be busier than anyone he knew.

"no?" he sent back but he was already clicking open news feeds and it only took a second before he found it. In big letters, over a cellphone picture from the same park where he had found nothing but flower gardens and perfectly cut grass. It was blurry but it was her. He couldn't see her face but the suit was unmistakable.

Spotted in St. Germain

Paris Attack

Ladybug Comes Home

"you've seen it now? THIS /post/04762893"

"do you think she'll do an interview about why she left?"

Alya's messages popped up on screen and interrupted his scrolling. She had linked her own blog. Of course she had, she was Alya. He stared at in confusion before opening it up to run through Alya's collection of the photos from the news sites. It wasn't a mistake. There was even a short video of her swinging up onto a lamp post as the Akuma flung bolts of what looked like lightening at her. It was only four seconds. He let it loop.

She was back. She was back and she had been so close. He must have missed her by minutes. His chest was tight and he sat down on the edge of a fountain because he had temporarily forgotten how to walk.

Elation and disappointment ran through him.

Ladybug was back in Paris. She hadn't waited for him and he didn't know how to find her but she was home.


	4. The Test Shoot

Two weeks later and Ladybug hadn't reappeared. There hadn't been an Akuma attack to draw her out and she had even faded away from the newspaper covers and the blogs. Adrien was grasping for distractions. Thankfully, they were everywhere. Classwork was piling up as the semester got started and he was packing in his readings around the preparations for the winter show. A book in one hand while someone measured his arm or held fabrics up to his face to debate his skin tone.

If he wasn't at work or in a class, he was out wandering the city. Sometimes he went as Adrien, sometimes as Chat. There wasn't any trouble but he hadn't come up with a better way to find her. The fear that she was gone again kept picking at his attention. Maybe she had only been passing through. Maybe he'd only had that one chance and he'd missed it. Maybe he would never see her again. He changed and popped open the little phone screen at least twice a day. It was driving Plagg crazy but if she called while he was Adrien, he'd miss it.

"Why don't superhero phones come with voice mail?" he asked after another call failed to go anywhere. The little screen was infuriatingly black and there was no one to answer him. He turned back into himself and slumped into a chair. He tilted his head up at Plagg and asked again. Plagg just scoffed. Adrien considered locking him in the vault with all the Akuma for the rest of the afternoon but Plagg had already settled into his shoulder bag with a piece of cheddar. Getting him out again seemed like more trouble than it was worth and Adrien needed to get to work.

In the lunch room that afternoon, he palmed some brie and dumped it into the bag for Plagg as a peace offering before picking out the food he was allocated by his nutritionist. Being a model came with some infuriating drawbacks and the nutritionist who determined when and what he could eat was the most grating of them.

He did not say, "I have superpowers and spend my nights running across the Paris rooftops. You can afford to feed me another slice of turkey without risking me not fitting into the new shirts," but he wanted to. Instead he thanked them and followed the instructions and went home and ate like Plagg until he wasn't hungry anymore.

Liam gave him a wave from one of the tables by the window but Adrien caught Marinette looking at him from a table with a couple of other young people whose names he didn't know. They were likely the rest of the incoming group of interns. He changed course and sat down in the a chair beside her.

And immediately regretted it.

"Hello," he said and then said nothing else because he didn't know what to say. His mind had gone blank. Perfect. He was going to make an idiot of himself in front of her.

"I think there are assigned seats," she said with a laugh. Then she froze, looked at him, turned bright pink and started to stammer, "I mean, you can sit where ever you want. Of course you can. I didn't mean you couldn't sit here. You can sit here. It's just that usually all the models sit together. I didn't mean... You can sit where ever you want."

"Would you rather I sit somewhere else?" he asked tightening his hold on his tray in case she asked him to leave.

"No," she said immediately and he sat down and started pushing at his lettuce.

She looked at him all starstruck and awkward for a second before she dropped her attention back to her sandwich. He wanted to shake her and remind her that she had been his classmate. He dreaded the idea that she could look at him like that: like he was a pretty thing that could be collected up and put on display. They had been through physics and literature and that biology class he had despised.

If she couldn't look at him like a person after seeing him throw up onto a formaldehyde-soaked dead frog, maybe no one could.

That thought was exhausting and terrifying. He almost got up and walked away. He might have if he hadn't heard Pietro laughing somewhere over his shoulder. Even if she thought of him as a celebrity, she was still better company than Pietro.

Adrien glanced away from her and across the table at the rest of the intern team. If Marinette was awkward, they were terrified and that was worse. He introduced himself, leaving off his last name though it was hardly a secret who he was. They wouldn't look at him like that if he wasn't Gabriel's son but he pretended he was normal.

If he pretended hard enough, maybe he could make it true. He could stop being famous and be Just Adrien.

He had had lessons on small talk. Literal lessons on how to be charming and he did his best to be charming to these strangers until they stopped looking at him like he was a member of an invading army come to destroy their city. He didn't ask if the hazing had begun or if anyone had already dropped out of the program. Light and friendly and then once they were talking to each other instead of gawking, he turned his attention back to Marinette.

"How was New York? It was New York you moved to, wasn't it?" he said.

"Montreal," she said, "That's in Canada. My mother has family there."

"I'll tell Liam he can't call you Americano anymore," Adrien said. "Canadiano? Canadiana?"

"Canuck," she said, "But I am French. I was born here."

"You are, I know," he said, "And France is glad to have you home."

For the first time since he sat down, she looked right at him and gave him a smile that wasn't strained or forced or shell-shocked. He returned it. Maybe, just maybe, being Just Adrien was possible.

As the lunch hour was winding down and Marinette and struck up a good natured argument with girl across the table named Marie-Claire, Liam came to join their table. Adrien bristled when Liam leaned on the table at Marinette's other side and she turned to look at him. He crushed down all his responses as utterly inappropriate. He had no right or reason to be all territorial. He did not need to be so protective of her. Besides, Liam wasn't going to do anything to her. He was just flirting, leaning a little too close as he talked.

Adrien told himself that he was probably just jealous because he couldn't flirt to save his life unless he was hidden away behind Chat Noir's mask. He made girls like Marinette Dupain-Cheng stare or bolt and girls like Chloe Bourgeois attempt to remake him into the pretty puppet they wanted him to be. Still, he was surprised that he wanted to lean in and wrap his arm around the back of her chair and draw her attention back to him.

"We're doing a test shoot this afternoon, do you want to come along?" Liam asked.

Marie-Claire blinked at him and his terrible accent for a moment before enthusiastically agreeing on everyone's behalf. Marinette turned to Adrien and raised her eyebrows and he smiled. She turned back to the others and let them sweep her along. He wondered if she had been asking his advice. It had seemed like she was asking his advice but maybe he was reading too much into it.

They called it a 'test shoot' but really it was an excuse to bother Les Nouvelles. Adrien had seen it pulled out against new photographers, new models, new interns, even once a new junior designer. They usually didn't try it with anyone who worked closely with Gabriel Agreste in case he heard about it. It had been years before Adrien had been allowed to attend and he suspected it had been Liam who had pleaded his case for him.

It was actually fun. Most of the things they did to new interns were awful and he avoided the entire enterprise like the plague. Test shoot day was an exception. It was less mean spirited than some of the pranks and an excuse to be silly in a way that models weren't usually allowed to be silly. At least not models who were on the Agreste line. Adrien had seen fashion spreads that were bright and funny and unusual but he'd very rarely done one and he'd never had one of those pictures chosen for an ad or a magazine.

"The items I create are classic and elegant and any photographs of them need to reflect that," Gabriel liked to say when the topic was brought up.

The kind of test shoots they ran on days like this were not classic and they were not elegant.

They used an empty office as their studio and piled into it. Agreste's clothing lines tended to focus on men's wear so most of the models were male but a few of the girls had tagged along as well as two photographers and the four interns. There were nearly twenty people in the room. Marinette tripped over one of them and when he tried to catch her, she flailed. He made an undignified noise as she hit him in the stomach and they both almost fell down.

She turned to him with wide blue eyes and started to apologize but he was still holding her by the elbow and that seemed to render her utterly unable to speak. He snatched his hand back and stepped away before he could undo all his progress toward a friendship with his idiocy. Before he could say anything, everyone was settling into around the room. Marinette, thankfully, didn't go and sit on the other side of the room to avoid him.

"Test shoots are just for experimenting," Pietro had grabbed Marie-Claire by the hand and was explaining the afternoon's plan. He was syrupy and kind and so very unlike Pietro. Marie-Claire was pretty in a way that would turn heads anywhere but in a room full of people who were professionally pretty. Pietro pulled her over to the desk and sat down on the edge of it as he talked, "It gives us a chance to try new poses and set ups. So it's just for fun, but you'll help with that right?"

To her credit, Marie-Claire giggled through the pelvic thrusting and the thing Pietro did with his tongue that always made Adrien a little bit uncomfortable and he'd never been that close to it. Marie-Claire set the tone for the rest of the hour. Everyone else relaxed and giggled their way through it. Some of them even played to the camera and let things go from silly to ridiculous.

In a moment of madness, Adrien grabbed Marinette's hand and pulled her forward. She gave him that awkward wide eyed look and he regretted not asking first. Why had he thought this would be acceptable? Why hadn't he just asked her first?

"Want to see Adrien screw it up?" someone asked and Adrien turned to look at the girl who had spoke. Naveen smiled at him and he couldn't tell if it was meant to be cruel. He could never tell when she was joking and when she wasn't, "Ask him to try and redo the silent partner shoot."

"What's that?" Marinette asked.

"It was three years ago," Adrien said.

"And none of those pictures were any good now were they?" Naveen said which started everyone laughing. Adrien smiled along. They all had their bad shoots and in a fashion house like this, that was this small, everyone knew everything. Besides, it had been an awful shoot. Awkward. So awkward.

"The girl's meant to be a prop, he's supposed to pose around you but you aren't allowed to look at the camera," someone explained to Marinette.

"That shoot would have been much better had they let you look at the camera, Naveen," Adrien said because he knew flattery was worth everything with her.

Marinette turned to look back at everyone else who heckled her to turn around. Adrien was more self conscious than she was. How many ways could he make a mess of this? He was about to find out. If he had better self-preservation, he would have bowed out but there was a part of him that balked at the idea of someone else being up here with her. What if they were rude or made her uncomfortable?

The original shoot hadn't worked but he could still remember the direction. He was good. He had been trained from childhood to model and he was good at it. It had frustrated him to not be able to make that shoot work. All the complaints were about things he couldn't figure out how to fix. There had been missing spark and energy and he hadn't managed to figure out how to recapture either of them.

With Marinette, here, just playing around, it didn't matter and that made it easier.

She didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on him and gave him nervous little looks if he got too close. He hadn't yet succeeded in his plan to convince her he was just a person. She still saw him as a celebrity but it didn't make him as uncomfortable like this. He wasn't really himself when a camera was on him.

She was the first one to touch and it threw him off far harder than he had thought possible. He ducked around her, circling and watching her and forgetting about everyone else. She reached out, almost unconsciously and let her fingers rest on his shoulder. He stepped into it until she had her arm around is neck.

This was something Chat Noir would do, not Adrien. Marinette was staring up at him and he smiled back. He was over confident. Not Chat Noir, but also not entirely himself. He had simultaneously slipped into being his model self and had forgotten the audience entirely. He let his hands settle to her waist and stepped in closer.

She was warm and her eyes were a shade of blue so familiar they looked like home though he wasn't sure what memory went with that feeling. He couldn't make it make sense but he didn't care. She was prettier than he remembered her or maybe he'd just never spent this much time looking at her before.

He cupped her chin in his hand because it was the type of thing you did in a shoot like this. And maybe, if he took a moment to be honest, he wanted her to keep looking at him.

She startled at the touch and backed away from him. She stumbled into a chair behind her, yelping and pinwheeling her arms. He slammed back into himself. Who she was and where they were and how far out of line he was: it was all suddenly crystal clear. He was as bad as Pietro and Mathias playing games with girls they didn't even know. He dropped his hands and stepped away as soon as she had righted herself.

She gave him a look that was all wide eyes and he made a couple of hasty apologies and bolted out of the room before he could make anything worse.


	5. The Fire

After making an ass of himself in front of Marinette, Adrien retreated to the library. His father could yell later about whatever scheduled activity he missed that afternoon. He needed to be alone. If he were alone, perhaps he could temporarily avoid embarrassing himself or anyone else.

He opened his backpack and fished out a notebook at random. Chinese homework. That was manageable. He had started taking Chinese classes when he was seven. It had been fun for awhile. Games and songs and his mother asking him to translate things around the house for her and being so impressed when he did it right. It had stopped being fun when he hadn't had her to share it with anymore. Most things had stopped being fun without her.

While his university Chinese courses were harder, they were also less stressful than the enrichment tutors his father had hired. Still he had a paper to write and he had made such a mess of the grammar on the last one that he was going to go through this one sentence by sentence. It would be time consume and keep all other thoughts at bay and that was all he really needed.

When he reached the end, he considered going back to the top and starting again because the other choices were go home and listen to akuma wings beat against glass jars or go visit his father and listen to him talk.

Or call Liam or Nino or Alya. He had friends. He could call a friend. He sometimes forgot he had friends. It wasn't so novel anymore. He had been friends with Nino for years. His phone was quiet but he scrolled through his contacts just to remind himself that these people where there.

He still somehow ended up alone when he left the library.

He walked out into the streets of Paris with his thoughts full of apologies he could make to Marinette that would erase how far over the line he had stepped. He let his mind wander until he was imagining conversations with other people. Things he would say to his father if he was very brave or maybe very drunk. He had never tried getting very drunk before talking to Gabriel and maybe that warranted some exploration.

And then there were things he would say to Ladybug.

There were so many things to say to Ladybug that he hadn't had a chance to get out. They had had years of being partners, of being friends and he'd filled up every conversation with jokes. Now all he wanted was a chance to say everything else. Apologies and promises and declarations. Accusations and jokes and questions. So many questions.

And as though his thoughts had summoned her, he rounded a corner and she was there.

He froze.

And stared.

Her back was to him and she stood outside the streetlamps on a patch of grass between the two lanes of traffic. Not hiding but still almost invisible in the shadows. The dark made the red of her suit a little duller and her hair was swept back in one long ponytail that hung down between her shoulder blades. He stepped out into traffic, some blew a horn at him and he swore back but didn't stop.

He did it without taking his eyes off of her.

If he did, maybe she'd disappear all over again.

Once he was standing on the same patch of grass as she was - close enough to see her earrings gleam in the flash of a car's headlamps - he realized where they were. They were standing in the middle of the rebuilt neighbourhood that had burned down the day of the last Akuma attack. It was pristine now but Adrien had watched it burn to the ground and watched the months of reconstruction as they'd cleared and rebuilt each house and each building.

"It wasn't your fault," he said cutting off the My Lady he almost tacked onto the end of the sentence because he wasn't Chat Noir. He'd been too distracted by seeing her to even consider transforming. Now he stood behind her as Adrien.

She spun on him, her yo-yo dropping so she was ready for an attack. He took another step back so he stood on the curb, right at the edge of the grass. He held up both hands and tried to look non-threatening. She didn't put the yo-yo away but she also didn't immediately swing away. She was frowning as she looked at him.

"Um, hi?" he said.

She took a step towards him and into the light and he took a second to just stare at her face.

"I realize you don't know who I am and I probably shouldn't say things like that but it wasn't and anyone who says that it was is an idiot," he rushed out.

People had said it. She was the Miraculous Ladybug and her miracle had fallen short that day. He was already cursing himself for bringing it up but it had always made him angry. Since the first day at school when someone had asked, not even accused, just wondered aloud why she hadn't been able to fix everything like she usually did. It had made him furiously angry then and every times since.

"It was my fault, people died here, right here, in the buildings around us, people died and I didn't help them," she said.

"And hundreds lived," he said stepping in closer, he wanted her to be able to see that he meant it. Maybe it was better that he was Adrien, he could make her believe it. He was just a citizen, not her friend, "I remember that day, it was the worst attack Paris has ever seen before or since. People were candles, they were candles and they were melting and it was terrifying. All those people are still alive."

"And because I wasn't strong enough, other people aren't," she said turning to look across the square at a four story building with blue shutters and a light on in a kitchen. It was one of the new ones. A little clothing shop on the first floor and then apartments above and a pair of garret windows. It looked like a hundred other buildings in Paris but she was watching it like it held answers.

"You lost someone," he said and the words hit him like a fist. He felt a little queasy at the realization. Only six people had died. Six. Out of the entire city, out of all the buildings that had burned, only six had died. He'd always thought of that as a sort of triumph. He'd counted all the wins and never considered the losses. Six people had seemed like such a small number but it wasn't to the people who had known them.

She had known them.

"My father," she said turning back to him.

"Oh," he said.

"He got out, he was fine but there were three boys who lived in that building, back when it had the bookshop in the first floor. They were all little and only two of them were there when everyone gathered here. Everyone was out on the street waiting for the fire brigade, or for me, to come and save them. So my father went into the building alone to find Leon," she said.

She turned and looked at the light in the window again. The streetlamp cast heavy shadows on her face so she didn't quite look the way he remembered her. The mask did little to hide her expression. There were tears in her eyes, making them shine even in the dark.

"Your father is a hero, like you are," he said taking a step towards her.

He stopped short of touching her. He wasn't Chat Noir, he wasn't her friend, he was a stranger. Chat could have put a hand on her back or pulled her in for a hug but Adrien was nobody to her. Still he couldn't leave her alone on the street with her eyes half full of tears.

"People always say that, that he was a hero and that makes it better," she said.

"When I lost my mother, people liked to remind me of how much she loved me, that didn't make it better either," he said. "I don't think anything makes it better. Loss isn't something that can be bandaged up and fixed. It just is."

"At least your mother's death wasn't your fault," she said.

Adrien did touch her then, reached out and took her hand as though he had known her for years. He had known her for years. She just didn't know it. Still, she let him hold onto her hand without moving and then, rather than pulling away, squeezed his fingers. He took a step closer. He knew she was shorter than he was but somehow it still surprised him. To be Adrien and be looking down at her like this.

"This was not your fault," he said.

"If I had been stronger," she started.

"If I had been older, if I had been there that night," he countered and she met his eyes but didn't say anything. He asked her, in the softest voice he could, "How many people have you told?"

"There are people who know that Ladybug failed that day and there are people who know that a girl's father died that day. Right now, you are the only person who knows how they go together," she said.

"You need someone to tell your secrets to. Too many secrets just make you miserable," he said.

"Are you volunteering?" she asked.

"If you want me to," he said.

Her expression softened and she reached towards him but stopped before she touched his face or his hair. They hung frozen for a moment. He leaned in. It was such a cat-like gesture that he would have kicked himself for it if she hadn't smiled at him. It was a sad smile but it was a smile. She had one hand curled around his palm and the other against his cheek and he could have stayed there for the rest of his life.

"At least one person doesn't hold it against me," she said.

"I'm sure it isn't true but at the very least you'll always have me and Chat Noir," Adrien said with a smile at his own joke.

"I don't think Chat wants to see me," she sighed, "But thank you."

She pulled his face down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He was too startled by it to argue with what she had said. She was close and her lips were soft and then she was gone. She let go of him and bounded off into the night before he had even collected his thoughts enough to spin around.


	6. The Lunch Meetings

Adrien's head was full of calculus. The new unit was harder than he had been expecting and he was still working on even memorizing the formulas. When he allowed himself a gap in all the equations, Ladybug slipped in and filled his mind up with those sad eyes.

There was no room in his head for his father's opinions.

This fact did not stop his father from talking.

This was one of their monthly lunches. Adrien had wanted to skip it but skipping it would mean an argument later. So he had dragged himself along to the fancy restaurant. He had worn a suit. Gabriel looked almost pleased when Adrien looked up at him. He kept a carefully bland look on his face. It was almost as difficult as all the calculus to keep the right blend of interested and polite in place but he had had a lot of practice.

"You should considering bringing a date that will catch attention but not cause the wrong kind of talk. You're still friends with the Bourgeois girl, aren't you? Her father recently announced his candidacy for president. You should give her a call," his father said and Adrien snapped back into the moment.

"You would like me to invite Chloe to an industry event?" Adrien asked and his voice came out sounding normal.

"Chloe, yes, that's it. Pretty, blonde, right? You'll look like a matched set. The photographers love that. She can borrow a proper gown if she doesn't have one," his father waved off the concern of Chloe's fashion sense with a careless hand as he picked up his cup of coffee.

"Chloe is not exactly the 'take out for a photo-op' kind of date," Adrien said, "If I take her out once, she will be having our engagement accidentally announced in the papers by the end of the week."

"Marrying a politician's child is always risky, if her father falls out of favour, she won't be nearly as useful," his father said.

"Did you honestly just tell me that my future spouse should be useful to the company's image?" Adrien said.

"It's a consideration," his father said from over the lip of his coffee cup.

Adrien took stock of the moment. His father looking pressed and neat and perfect. Not a hair out of place, not a stitch of clothing out of place. Not quite human. Did he wake up with his hair like that? Shouldn't his son know that? Adrien had lived in the same house with him for eighteen years and hadn't ever seen him disheveled. The restaurant around them was just as stark. Beautiful, yes, every floral arrangement and square of white linen was beautiful but it felt suddenly empty.

"Is that why you married my mother, because she helped the company's image. She was pretty enough and cultured enough to make you look good at parties?" Adrien was angry but he kept his voice low. This would not be a scene. He didn't want a scene reported in the papers any more than his father did. He still had a dessert ordered but he got up and slowly slid his chair back into place.

He didn't want to hear the answer. Whatever the answer was, he didn't want to hear it. He retreated before he had to hear it.

"I'll see you on Thursday," Adrien said.

Then he left.

Without being dismissed.

He was an adult. He was headed towards his twenty-first birthday and he still couldn't walk away from a table with his father without needing to be dismissed. That thought just made him angrier. He transformed in the alley behind the restaurant, prodding a sleeping Plagg out of his pocket and then took off across the city. Chat was faster than he was and he didn't really want to be himself at that moment.

Chat Noir jumped rooftop to rooftop until he was back in the business district. He climbed up the side of the building that housed Agreste Couture without really thinking it through. He found an open window and hung on the ledge for a moment to be sure the room was empty before he swung himself up inside.

And the room was not empty.

Of course it wasn't, because that was the kind of day he was having.

Marinette looked up from a sewing machine and a minor designer he vaguely recognized stood over her with a piece of fabric in his hand. Marinette and her arms crossed and her jaw set. The designer, Elijah, had pursed his lips and was shaking the bit of green material in his hand. They both turned to look at Chat Noir with wide eyes.

"Is something wrong?" Marinette asked.

"Do we need to evacuate? Is there another monster on the loose?" Elijah's voice was panicked. His arrogant sneer fell away.

"A guy can't just break into an office building without a good reason?" Chat said.

"It is a felony," Marinette said and a corner of her lip twitched.

"Feline-y, I like that, I need to remember that," he said.

"Are you sure there's nothing wrong? Maybe we should evacuate? I can go raise the alarm!" Elijah said.

"You do not need to evacuate, everything is purrfectly fine," Chat told him but the man was already turning towards the door. Marinette turned to watch him go with a look of relief on her face. She slumped back in the chair and picked up the bit of green that Elijah had been flapping around and turned it over a few times. She dropped it back on the desk and raised her eyebrows at Chat.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Choosing the wrong window, though it has brought me to you so perhaps it is destiny," he said with a grand sweep of his arm.

She stared at him, frowned at him and then let out a little explosion of laughter. She leaned down over her sewing machine, put her head on her arms and giggled. He grabbed a low stool from against the wall, sat down on it and spun his way over to her, pushing with a foot until he caught up against the table. His stool was lower than her chair so he had to tilt his head back to look up at her.

"Usually I am not so charming as to reduce girls to hysterics," he said setting his chin on his hands and watching her with a little smirk. She had an infectious laugh and he wanted to join in with her and keep her giggling. Adrien knew her a little but Chat Noir had only ever properly met her once. Still, a little bit of flirting didn't seem like such a bad way to wash away the conversation with his father.

Flirting with someone his father wouldn't consider 'useful' felt like a bit of a rebellion. It helped remind him that his father's opinions of usefulness weren't anything. Her giggle alone was worth more than all his father's sneering.

"It's been a terrible day," she said without lifting her head but the laughter was still in her voice. She might have been reading out of his mind but he didn't tell her, "Me too."

"Do you need me to scratch someone for you?" he asked. When she looked up he gave her a theatrical hiss and flexed his claws at her. She shook her head and gave him a rueful smile like he had done something charming but embarrassing. Maybe he had.

"You need to go find your proper window, kitty cat, you don't want people thinking you're a stray," she said.

"But I'm so cute, maybe you should adopt me," he said leaning toward her and widening his eyes.

She laughed again and then braced her foot against the stool he sat on and pushed. He bumped into a cabinet and tried to catch himself and failed entirely. Instead he set himself spinning back out into the middle of the room where the wheel caught on his tail and the entire thing went over. It happened fast and he was left lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling feeling a little dazed and confused.

Marinette came over and frowned down at him. She looked worried and that made him flash her a big bright grin. She scoffed but held out a hand to help him up. He kept her hand once he was untangled and back on his feet. He went to kiss the back of her fingers and she pulled her hand away gently.

"Adieu, my princess," he said.

"Get out or I'll chase you out like an old lady with a broom," she said pulling her hand back but still smiling.

"You're the prettiest old lady I have seen all day," he said.

"Out," she said, "And if anyone asks, you were never here."

"Where? I was nowhere," he said and then he climbed back out onto the window ledge and gave her one more charming smile before climbing towards the roof and the service entrance there that he could use to sneak back inside as Adrien.

"Bye bye kitty cat," she said and he was still smiling by the time he made it up over the edge of the building and onto the gravel roof top.


	7. The Invitation

Adrien scampered back down the stairs. All he needed to do was pick up his school bag but as he was passing the workshop that Marinette had been in another thought crossed his mind. He slowed and then back tracked to the door. He hesitated with his hand on the doorknob for a moment and then pushed it open.

She was still there and still fussing with the bit of green whatever it was. She had a little half smile on her face as she looked up. Maybe Chat Noir should take up a slapstick tour, cheering up girls and boys across France by falling off of furniture. Her eyes got a little wider when she saw him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey, Elijah had mentioned you were up here," he said.

"Did he also mention the imaginary Akuma monster he was running away from?" she asked.

"There's an Akuma?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said waving the topic away.

"Can I ask you for a favour?" He pulled the same chair he had sat on as Chat back over to her table and dropped himself onto it again. She gave him a strange look but didn't say anything about it.

"Sure," she said.

"Do you want to go to the Gala?" he asked.

"Interns aren't invited," she told him.

"I know that but I was thinking that you could go as my guest," he said.

"What? To the Gala. The Gala? That Gala? Are you- Why?" she asked eyes going wider.

He hadn't thought this through. It had been a whim. He was struck by the sudden fear that she thought it was a trick and he was setting her up for some sort of prank. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything. She had no reason to trust him. He had been imagining she was a childhood friend, like Nino and Alya. Someone who had known him back before the first international ad campaign or the first men's wear show. Back when he was Adrien first and model second. But they weren't friends. She didn't owe him anything. He faltered but he'd already made the invitation so he couldn't very well run away now.

"I'm not asking you on a date or anything. I just. Um. I need a date and my father thinks I should take Chloe Bourgeois or some minor movie star and I don't even know where to find a minor movie star on short notice. And. Well, I would rather go with someone I know and I don't hate. That's not fair, I don't hate Chloe but I don't want to spend an entire day with her," he was rambling and paused to take a breath before he rambled on, "It would be a great opportunity for you too. It's an industry event so there'll be designers and reps from all the big houses and the advertising firms. I can introduce you to all kinds of people."

"You want to take me to one of the biggest events of the year because you don't hate me?" she said.

Adrien dropped his head down onto the desk beside her and groaned. He had his face buried in a half finished bit of purple shirt or jacket and underneath it was a pair of scissors and some spools of threads. It was all very uncomfortable but he needed a minute of not looking at her. She had gotten more and more alarmed as he had blabbered and he needed to pretend it hadn't been happening. Why couldn't he talk to her?

"I will have you know I am very charming," he said.

"I know," she said and it sounded earnest and not at all sarcastic.

He tried again, "We weren't really friends in school but we got along well, didn't we?" She nodded at him but it was a little wary. He gave her a smile, trying to be more calming. It didn't work so he just kept talking, "I'd like to be friends. This is my terrible attempt at being friendly. Come to a work party with me. Don't think of it as a big event. Just a party."

"I don't have anything to wear even if it is just a party," she said.

"That's ok, I've already got permission to raid the warehouse," he said standing up and holding out a hand.

She let him pull her to her feet and and he looked her over. Thin but not model thin, too short for anything floor length but that didn't mean they couldn't find her something that would work well.

"You're a size four?" he said.

"Yes?" she looked at him baffled.

"I spend a lot of time with clothes," he admitted before accurately guessing her shoe size as well, "With your skin tone, you'll want something in warm colours. Pinks or reds or even the right orange though a lot of orange gowns are kind of pumpkiny. We can try some blues if they match your eyes but most of the blues over the last few seasons have been icy and if the blue is too pale, you'll end up looking washed out."

"You really do spend a lot of time with clothes," she said.

"I do. I'll tell you a secret?" he leaned a little closer and raised his eyebrows. He did not cross into her personal space. He would not make that mistake again.

She nodded and he said, "I sometimes dream of being a model."

She laughed and it wasn't as unrestrained as when she'd been laughing at Chat Noir but hearing it still made him feel better.

"Will you come to the party with me. Just friends at a work event," he said.

"Yeah, yes. I will go," she said with another laugh

"Great, I will get you a proper invitation so you'll have the times and everything, when are you done work tomorrow? We can go look at gown possibilities," he said. He was giddy with the prospect of the party for the first time in years. His father was not going to be pleased but he had found a way to turn a peacock show of a charity dinner into something that would help a friend. That felt like a victory. And she really would look good in a dark pink gown.

By the time he left the room, he was feeling good. The conversation with his father was a thousand miles away and he went home that afternoon nearly bouncing.

* * *

AN: Hi! There weren't any author notes on the other chapters because I just binge posted them because I had them all finished so it was just a cross-post. I've been averaging every 2 days for an update schedule but I make no promises that updates will be even or their frequency. Thank you for reading.


	8. Interlude: Phone Calls with Alya 1

She sat with her feet tucked up under her on the little plastic bed in the dormitory. She didn't attend classes because she was there for the intern program but the university had made an exception for her and allowed her to rent a dorm room. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to afford to live anywhere near the fashion district and two hours on the train would have left her with no time to sleep.

Her phone was ringing and she picked it up without looking at the screen. She'd set that ring tone. It only rang like that for one person.

"Hey, girl, what's up?" Alya said.

"Remind me that I am over him and I am not a pining idiot," Marinette said.

"Is this about Adrien?" Alya asked.

"No, it is about the other boy I spent all my teenage years sighing over and staring at and being an idiot about," Marinette said.

"Oh, you never talked about him, what's his name?" Alya asked.

"I hate you," Marinette said.

"Tell me what happened," Alya said.

"Earlier this week, they - the models - were messing around and the had us interns come up to an old room so they could try and embarrass us by taking suggestive pictures," she said.

"Oh my god," Alya said.

"It was funny actually," Marinette said, "But hat's not the point of this story, the point of this story is that Adrien is very tall and smells very good and I got far too close to him and then I freaked out and fell over a table and embarrassed him so much that he ran away. Then today, he shows up in my workroom and asks me to the biggest event of the year. The big charity gala they hold at the Louvre? That one. He's going to help me pick a dress and we're going as 'just friends' and I think I'm going to die."

"That's kind of a big deal for a 'just friends' kind of date," Alya said.

"I know," Marinette's voice was a squeak and she shook herself hard and sat up in her chair. "But it's a great opportunity. You don't turn down great opportunities to meet the best in the world because your stupid teenage crush happens to be stupid and still smell good and somehow can tell what shoe size you wear just by looking."

"That's the worst flirting ever," Alya said.

"You only say that because he wasn't looking at you like that when he said it. Or maybe he wasn't looking at me like that. He was probably actually just trying to figure out my shoe size. Which is why you are supposed to be reminding me that it was years ago and I am over him and it doesn't matter that he smells good or has this perfect little smile when he's embarrassed and is going to look so good in a tuxedo. Oh no. Stop me. Come over here and stab me maybe," she said.

"I am not stabbing you, then you'd bleed all over the dress your hot model not a boyfriend got for you," Alya said.

"I'm over him," she said.

"Liar," Alya said cheerfully.

"I am," she said.

"You just chose stabbing over imagining him in a tux, you have it so bad," Alya said.

"Not helping," Marinette told her.

"Hey, I've been hanging out with him and Nino a lot these last few years. Trust me, you'd be good for him. He need a girl like you. For a ridiculously pretty rich boy, he has surprisingly terrible luck. Besides, you're leaving again in January. Live in a little. Go on the date. Wear the fancy dress. Get over him when you're back in Canada," Alya said.

"Alya!" Marinette said.

"You did say yes, didn't you?" Alya said.

"Yes," Marinette said.

"Then go, it's not a real date anyways. It's 'just friends' which is a free pass to just have some fun. You deserve fun. You're fingers will fall off from all the sewing you do. Besides the troll designers who keep yelling at you will die of jealousy. I bet none of them were invited. Look on the bright side," Alya said.

"I'll go, it'll be fine because I am over him," she said.

"Liar," Alya said but then she hung up the phone before Marinette could start another argument.


	9. The Dreamweaver

The Dreamweaver had already put an entire school of children to sleep by the time Chat Noir arrived. She was moving out into the street. An older woman with gray streaked hair and a patterned dress though her hair stood up in three directions and her dress flowed across the street like a curtain. Still, she kind of looked like a kindergarten teacher. Drifts of pale yellow sand floated ahead of her and when someone breathed it in they fell asleep, crumpling over cafe tables or falling asleep leaned up against a wall.

"That doesn't look comfortable," Chat told the man drooling against a plate glass window as he ran by. The man was deeply asleep and didn't even shift. At least he wasn't one of the ones who was snoring.

Ladybug arrived moments after he did and she landed at his side, where she always had before. He looked away from the Akuma on the rooftop for a moment, just a moment, to look at her. She was simultaneously tiny and imposing. It was like she was bigger than the willowy little red clad body she lived in.

"Hi," he said.

It might have been more than a moment.

"Look out!" she said.

Ladybug had to haul him out of the way of a cascade of powder that fell across the street like a snow drift.

"Can't we just have some peace and quiet!?" the Akuma screamed at them, "Just take a nap and everything will be fine!"

He caught up against Ladybug under a shop awning. They banged into the glass but the sleeping man on the other side only twitched. Ladybug held his wrist tight and he'd fallen into her so she was pressed back against the glass by the weight of him. She held his gaze and her eyes were bright and blue and unreadable. Was she angry? Was she sad? What had she meant when she told Adrien that Chat Noir didn't want to see her?

"Always a pleasure to have you here, my Lady," he said with a grin and a silent prayer that she understood what he meant.

"Pay attention before we both end up sleeping in the streets, alley cat," she said.

He grinned a little wider and she let go of him. Reluctantly, he stepped away from her and looked towards the rooftops to see where the Akuma had gone. Ladybug peaked out around him and caught sight of the cascade of powder coming towards them before he did. She grabbed him and suddenly they were swinging through the air as she pulled him up onto a rooftop.

There wasn't time for talking. They were in the middle of an attack and that had to be dealt with first before the entire city fell asleep.

They weren't as smooth as they'd once been. He had to dance out of the way of her yo-yo, she had to re-correct for him more than once but it was still familiar.

More than that. Right. It was right.

She was there.

He lost his baton when he got into a hand to hand scuffle with the Dreamweaver and Ladybug threw it back to him with perfect aim. He snatched it out of the air and felt invincible. He wouldn't admit it, not out loud, not even to himself, but a part of him feared taking on these fights alone. He was always one wrong move away from leaving Paris defenseless. With her falling into step beside him, calling out warnings and covering blind spots he forgot he had, it was almost fun.

"I'm fighting a flying brainwashed kindergarten teacher but hey, at least it's fun," he muttered.

"What was that?" Ladybug asked as she stretched out a hand and let him pull her up onto a balcony where they had a better view of the street and where the Akuma was going.

"This is much meow fun with you here," he said with a grin.

She gave him a look that wasn't the dismissive, indulgent smile she usually rewarded a terrible pun with. It was more complicated than that. She still looked a little annoyed that the pun had been so atrocious but she also looked sad or maybe even guilty.

"You've got nothing to apologize for, My Lady," he said but another wave of sleeping sand was drifting towards them and she went left as he went right. He didn't know if she even heard him.

The fight didn't last much longer. The butterfly was in the teacher's pointer that Dreamweaver kept swinging around. It was Ladybug who pulled it out of her hand and Chat who smashed it on the ground.

And when it was all over, Ladybug tilted her head back and watched a little white butterfly flutter up in a lazy spiral toward the sky. A breeze pushing it towards the Seine as clouds moved in above them.

"You really are a miracle," he said.

"Mmm?" she said.

Her eyes were half closed when she looked at him and he realized what had happened. A breeze whirled through the streets. Not much, just enough to churn up the dust and Ladybug sneezed and then yawned.

"Don't fall asleep, not here," he said and she shook her head hard but he could feel the effect of the powder as well. She hadn't had a chance to clean it up. The Akuma was gone but falling asleep in the street wasn't safe. Did Hawkmoth have other agents? He didn't know and he wasn't going to risk her to find out.

"Wake up, LB," he said coming closer. A larger dose must have hit her than had hit him because she seemed to be fading faster. Wavering on her feet and yawning again. Indecision lasted only a moment before he grabbed her wrist and pulled her down the street. There were other options but none of them were as safe and all he could think about was making her safe.

"Where are we going?" she had shaken off a little of the lethargy but he could still feel it in his own muscles so he didn't think they were out of the woods yet. The transformation made them stronger but it wouldn't protect them from everything, including it appeared, sleeping sand.

He almost took her in through the front doors but the doorman was sleeping over the desk there and he remembered that there were security cameras. The last thing he wanted was video of a pair of superheroes entering his apartment complex to leak out onto the news. Even bone tired, as though he hadn't slept in weeks, he knew how to climb up to the fire escape and make it to his window without being seen.

Ladybug was half asleep by that point. She kept shaking herself awake but she needed him to help her up the last few steps. They fell into the apartment and he had the presence of mind to pull shut the heavy blackout drapes so none of the neighbours could see them. He hadn't made his bed that morning but it was now too dark in the room to be able to tell.

"Chat?" she asked.

"We can talk about it in the morning," he slurred out. He still had his arm around her waist and he wasn't sure if he pulled her down into the bed or if she was the one who pulled him down. He gave up the fight to stay awake and the last thing he was aware of was her hair in his face and then he was asleep.

* * *

 **AN:**

Heeee. This is why there's an "accidental cuddling" tag on this story. Heee. I finally understand why people say they are "trash of the thing" in the words of Lin Manuel Miranda. I am trash of the thing.

In other news, I move this week so we're going from daily/nearly daily updates to see you on Friday assuming I can actually get my internet connected or can find a convenient cafe with wifi in a new city when I don't have a car and won't get my bus pass until my campus reopens after new years.

So yeah, enjoy that cliffhanger, lovelies.

(or I'll have more time than I am expecting and update tomorrow, you know how it is).


	10. The Next Morning

Adrien woke up feeling warm and heavy and safe and good. He smiled and started to roll over because whatever dream he had just come from must have been wonderful but there was something in his way. Something warm and heavy and draped across his chest. He tried to shake off the sleep but he was too tired, barely awake. She shifted against him and pressed her face into his neck.

"Oh god," he whispered.

"Chat?" her voice was soft and thick.

"Right here," he said.

He reached up and touched her hair. It was loose and he absently smoothed the strands back from her face. She shifted again, pressing even closer and he had to remind himself to breathe. He couldn't see her. He'd thrown the curtains shut and it must still be night because even the heavy blackout cloth couldn't completely keep the glow of the sun away. The room was black as midnight and warm. He wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming.

He was still dressed, even his shoes were on. They had fallen into bed as Ladybug and Chat Noir but he was Adrien again. Her mask was gone too, he traced his finger down the bridge of her nose and couldn't feel it. He pulled his hand back because she wouldn't let him do that if she was awake.

"Ladybug?" he asked then tried again a little louder.

"Hmm?" she said.

"Wake up," he said.

"No," she muttered and he could feel her mouth move against his collarbone. That wasn't helping with either his ability to breathe or his understanding of where the boundaries were.

"Please?" he said.

She lifted her head, still pressed in close to his side and still invisible in the dark. His hand was still in her hair and he untangled it but then couldn't figure out where to put it. He grabbed a hold of a pillow that had been pushed off to the side and twisted his fingers tight to keep himself from touching her when he wasn't sure she wanted to be touched.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Akuma attack, sleeping sand everywhere," he managed to get out past his heart trying to climb up his throat.

"Where are we?" she as she shifted and pulled away from him. He could imagine her half sitting over him.

"My apartment," he said.

"It's dark," she said.

"I sometimes sleep strange hours, so I have heavy curtains. And it's the middle of the night," he said. Chat Noir should have made an entirely different kind of comment there but she sounded nervous and he wasn't Chat Noir at that moment, he was Adrien. She didn't know that but he still found himself falling into Adrien's speech patterns, not Chat's.

"Are you hurt?" she was still Ladybug. Whoever she was in the rest of her life, she was still herself. Shaking off the sleep to worry over someone else.

He sat up and held out his hands though she couldn't see him, "Purrfect, not a scratch."

"You've been doing alright without me?" she said it somewhere between a statement and a question.

"It's good to have you back," he told her which didn't really answer what she had said but he wasn't ready for that yet. If he pretended it away hard enough, maybe this could be simple.

They sat in the dark for a long silent moment filled with things he wasn't willing to admit. He hadn't been doing alright without her. He had been surviving without her but Akuma attacks left people dead these days. Paris's tourism had dropped off to almost nothing but those people who hoped to catch a bit of the action. The world, his world, was darker and more dangerous without her.

"Chat?" she finally said.

Her voice small and the blankets rustling and he was suddenly angry at himself for letting it hang in the air like that. He should have done more to reassure her. She didn't deserve to sound that upset. She had lost her father and had moved halfway around the world and it wasn't her fault. Hawkmoth and his Akuma were to blame, not her.

"I'm just glad to have you here, that's all that matters," he started but she cut him off.

"You never called," she said.

"Oh," he said.

"I left you everything. I thought you would. I thought maybe we could figure something out even over the distance, we could find a way to work together. I thought you would have called or sent an email or a tweet. You could have sent me a tweet," she had struggled her way off the bed. He felt the mattress shift under her weight.

"I never read it," he said.

It had been the battle after the fire. The last time he'd seen her. She had been quiet and angry. When it was over, she had watched the little white butterfly fly out of sight before turning to him. Her miracle stone was beeping but she'd taken both his hands and told him she wasn't coming back. She had been sad and angry. He had never heard her like that before. She had kissed him on the cheek and pressed a small white envelope into his hands.

"I think I'll miss you the most," she had said and then there was another beep and she kissed him again before leaving him alone.

She sighed and in the dark he didn't know where she was. He wanted to reach out and turn on the light but she had always been so protective of who she was. It felt wrong to turn the lights on without her permission so he sat in the dark and looked at where he thought she might be. He dropped his feet over the edge of the bed.

"I would have. I wanted to. I-" he sighed and tried to start over.

"Where are you?" she said and her hand hit his shoulder.

Somehow her fumbling around in the dark struck him as incredibly funny. Or maybe he was just nervous. He had to smother a laugh as he took her hand in both of his and she sat down beside him and sat so her shoulder touched his. He nudged her and she leaned back. It felt like an invitation so he wrapped his arm around her and she settled into him. His heart seemed to have forgotten how to beat properly and was skittering around inside his ribcage like it wanted to escape.

"I got home that day and it felt too big, too important to read when I was such a mess. I had gotten caught in that goo stuff before I had a chance to transform. I had thought I was the only one home, I left it on the table while I went to shower," his voice for sounded almost calm.

The story came out calm as well. Just a reporting of facts. There'd been a pile of his father's stuff on the same table and some helpful assistant had come along, gathered up everything and shredded it. They'd just taken out the garbage and gotten rid of everything.

"I thought maybe I could find the pieces, put it back together again like one of those CSI guys but there was too much," he said.

"That's ridiculous," she said.

"I know," he said, "I wish it had been one of those things that was funny in hindsight but I still don't really find it funny."

She was quiet but she'd grabbed hold of his hand as he told her the story. He could imagine them sitting there. If anyone walked in, they'd look like a couple who had just received some bad news. Letting his imagination out of its box was never a good idea where she was concerned. He was an only child, a lonely only child, he was very good at imagining things until they started to feel real. That was his excuse for leaning over and kissing the top of her head.

He didn't have a single explanation for why she tilted her face up and kissed him on the mouth.

It happened slowly. His mouth was against her hair and then she was shifting and for a moment he thought he had overstepped and ruined it but then her mouth brushed his. He started to say something, he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth and he didn't get a chance to find out. The brush of lips could have been an accident but this was not.

She kissed him.

Gently and slowly. He pulled her in with that arm around her shoulder and she cuddled in. One of her hands came to rest on his chest. Not tentative but achingly gentle.

Then he did something wrong and she panicked and it all fell to pieces. She pushed back, her hand on his breastbone was stronger than he expected but he didn't shove him all the way off. Her fingers tightened in his shirt like a cartoon villain pulling someone in to punch them in the face. He wasn't entirely sure he would be surprised if she did punch him in the face.

"Oh," she gasped and dropped her head to his shoulder, "Oh. I'm sorry."

"You do not need to be sorry," he said and it came out more Chat Noir than he'd really intended. Flirty. Too flirty. She was untangling herself and pulling away, getting up again and backing away from him.

"I should go," she said.

"Wait," he said.

"No, that was a mistake and you and I know and I shouldn't and you should and I have to go," she babbled. That the very cool and very collected Ladybug rambled when she was nervous was endearing. He wanted to pull her in close again but that was obviously not going to happen.

"I need to show you something before you go. It's important and it isn't about that," he said in his best practiced professional voice. He sounded collected and together. Not at all like he could still feel her and was about to crawl out of his own skin.

"I need to transform," she said.

"Alright, then I'll show you my collection," he said.

"Of what?" she asked.

"Go find your Kwami and send Plagg back here. It's easier to show you than it is to try and explain," he said then he got up and went by memory into the bathroom to give her a little bit of privacy. He turned on the light and sat down on the edge of the tub. He put his head on his knees and took deep breaths until he started to feel like himself again.


	11. The Collection

She sat on the floor and stared up at the shelves.

He'd caught her looking curiously at the rest of his apartment but she didn't ask any questions about that. She hadn't said anything at all since he'd come out of the bathroom to find her sitting on the edge of his bed, Ladybug again. He'd taken his cue from her. An unusually heavy silence between them. He pushed open the reinforced door and had let her walk inside without any ceremony or explanation.

"I had this sense that something was wrong. I thought I was feeling the after-effects of the sleeping sand but it wasn't, it was this. Can you feel them all the time?" she whispered like they were in a church. No, a mausoleum.

"The door helps," he said, "When I used to keep them under my bed, it was a lot a worse."

"It's like they're all whispering but it's too quiet to hear," she said.

"But they don't have anything nice to say," he said, "Trust me, I know."

She just shook her head and stared up at them in awe for another few moments before the questions started. She wanted to know what he had tried, what had worked, what hadn't. She asked for the stories behind the labels and some he had forgotten entirely. The names or descriptions could have been written by someone else. Others were vivid memories he hadn't been able to shake even when he tried. It had been five years. Five years and sometimes as many as one a week. Other times there would be only one in three months. But even with the down times, it was a lot of butterflies.

She stood up, all in one fluid motion and crossed the room to him. More by instinct or habit, he flashed her a grin. He was leaning against the door frame, one foot crossed over the other and his arms tight over his chest. He hated opening the door at all and he hated that he was forcing all this on her.

She caught his face, one palm on either cheek and pulled him in. She didn't kiss him. He was going to be teetering on the possibility of a second kiss for the rest of his life. Every time she got close he was going to remember it. If this was any indication, he was going to remember it vividly. They were nose to nose and his heart was trying for an escape again.

"I am so sorry for this. I should have known. It was unforgivable to leave it on you like this," she said.

"I forgive-" he started but she put a hand over his mouth.

"You shouldn't. I don't deserve it," she said, "But I'll put it right. I can purify them. We can release them. I'll make this up to you."

"I know," he said and then because he needed to break the tension and she was right there so he kissed the end of her nose. She laughed and jumped away from him. He slouched a little more, tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, "I can think of a few ways you could make it up to me."

"Do you ruin every serious moment in your entire life?" she asked.

"All nine of them," he said.

She laughed and picked up a jar off the nearest shelf. The drone of wings got louder and the smile fell off her face. Each jar was too heavy for its contents. He knew that but watching someone else discover it made his skin crawl all over again. She held them in her hands, hefting one and frowning at it before trying another. It was like the air inside was weighted down by all the evil that had been packed into each one of them.

He imagined Hawkmoth as some sort of fountain of hate. Even when he wasn't filling butterflies were bad intentions and sending them out to terrorize the city, he probably carried that same aura of unease around him that each Akuma did. Some people were just miserable. Hawkmoth had to be one of them.

Ladybug was probably the exact opposite. She was one of those people who walked into a convenience store to buy some milk and when she walked out everyone was smiling. He tried to imagine her face without the mask but something about the magic made the details swim. He could describe her face in details but he couldn't ever remember it properly when she wasn't there. Still, whatever she looked like, people had to smile at her.

"Are you staring at me?" she asked.

"Do you want me to help? Do you need anything?" he ignored the question because he had been. He had been staring and trying to imagine her in her day to day life and generally doing what his grandmother would have called mooning.

"I need more space than this. And carry this one," she said handing him the jar.

They moved back out to the living room. He'd never decorated. An interior designer had decorated. It was all very tasteful and beautiful and the art on the wall might have been real and was almost definitely painted by someone important. But the space was as personal as a hotel room. Sitting there, on his beige sofa, as Chat Noir, opening jars and watching Ladybug felt a little surreal.

She did seven of them before she wavered and dropped down beside him. Her miracle stone beeped at her and she yawned. He glanced up at the ceiling where seven little white butterflies fluttered around the lamp.

"It's going to take forever at this pace," she said.

"Have you ever done more than one at a time?" he asked.

The miracle stone beeped again and she shook her head.

"Then seven is pawsitively impressive," she punched him and there was another beep. He got a little closer, bumped his shoulder against hers, "So it takes some time. Something about rabbits and turtles and winning races," he said with a shrug and a wave of his hand.

They sat together for another moment. She had two beeps left and he had a brief fantasy of her just sitting there beside him until she changed back. Instead she popped up off the sofa and bounced across the room. She paused with her hand on the door to his bedroom. That caused his imagination to throw some more fantasies that he pushed down before any hints of them showed on his face.

"If I gave you my phone number, would you call me?" she asked.

"Can I send you snap chats?" he asked.

She laughed and disappeared into his room before the transformation could slip. He came to lean against that door frame. She was in his room. It was a stupid thing to obsess over. Just four walls, just a person but his mind kept getting caught on it. She was in his room.

"Number?" she said from the other side. She was herself again and though her voice was exactly the same, somehow he could tell. Maybe it wasn't exactly the same, maybe the magic changed it just a little bit. Maybe it was all in his head.

He rhymed off his phone number. It was unlisted because Adrien Agreste was famous enough that stalkers had happened. That any one cared enough about Adrien to go out and find his phone number and follow him home always shocked him and left him feeling rattled. He never quite understood that he was famous even as his face got plastered across billboards and magazines.

The magic made it impossible to recognize her but it also made it possible for him to escape his life and be Chat Noir. Some days it felt like a good trade off. Others, not so much.

On the dining room table, his shoulder bag beeped. He scampered over to it and pulled out the phone. A bunch of messages from Liam trying to convince him to go to some party, an email about an appointment for the Dior shoot next week, Alya's blog update about the Akuma attack - she had set his phone to receive them automatically and he could not figure out how to turn the alerts off - and then there, in the mess of notifications, a text message from an unidentified number.

"Hi, LB," and nothing else.

"Hi back, C," he sent.

He heard it arrive on the other side of the bedroom door. A little chime.

"I'll text you, tomorrow, I've got a thing after work but after, if it's alright with you, I'll come back and do some more of them. I'll see you then?" she called through the door.

"Until tomorrow, My Lady," he said. She knocked once on the door instead of smacking him in the arm and he feigned a pained noise as though he had felt it. He heard the window and waited until she slid it shut again. The fire escape they had climbed up to get in rattled and clanked as she let herself down the side of the building. He was going to get an angry note from at least one of his neighbours about 'improper use of emergency equipment' or something but he didn't care.

He transformed and fell back into the mess of blankets that still smelled like her. Plagg made a derisive noise somewhere above him but he didn't care about that either. He was full of an emotion it took him a long time to identify as hope.

He'd never felt truly hopeless but still, this swelling sureness that things were turning around was surprising. He flipped open his phone and the message was still there. It had arrived at 4:38 am. She had sat on the edge of his bed and kissed him. She had left him with seven butterflies to shoo outside and seven fewer Akuma to wear on his nerves.

"Today is a good day, Plagg," he said.

Plagg didn't answer him but he was already falling asleep with a half smile on his face.

AN: I have an internet connection and a huge lead on this story, expect frequent updates in the near future.


	12. The Warehouse

For a day that had began with kisses and miracles, it didn't seem to have any inclination to remain good. He overslept and was late for his lecture. He smashed his finger during a practical lab assignment. Then there was the fall out from the lunch he had stormed away from. That conversation had happened in his father's office which always made it feel a little less like it was his father telling him off and more like it was his boss.

Every time he had a free moment, he sent text messages full of nothing to the number he'd assigned in his phone only as L. Puns and jokes. A picture of a squirrel with the caption, "Do you think it would be undignified to chase it?" Anything and everything except, "I miss you," because there were still things he couldn't say.

Sometimes he got answers right away, sometimes she didn't respond for hours. Whatever her day job was, it left her with less time for sending inane text messages than his did.

"Good day?" Marinette asked when he met her outside the design offices.

"No," he said, "But I'm in one of those good moods that doesn't need a good day. I'm a strong independent young - well, not a woman but that doesn't mean I can't use the quote, strong independent young man and I don't need a good day to have a good day, you know?" he said. She gave him a strange look and he realized he was talking to her the way he'd talk to Nino or Ladybug. That made him grin a little wider. He was so glad to have another friend to add to his terribly small list.

"Are you reconsidering being friends with me yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," she said.

"Give it another week, you'll get sick of me. Until then, let's go shopping," he said putting both hands on her shoulders and turning her in the direction of the elevators.

He was giddy and Marinette kept disappearing into her thoughts. She wasn't as carefully dressed as she usually was. In a building full of the fashion obsessed, he hadn't noticed that she dressed well until her shoes didn't match her bag and her sweater fit wrong.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked as they got off the elevator. He had talked the entire way down but she had looked through him.

"Do you ever wonder how things would be different if one thing was changed?" she said.

"All the time," he said. Ladybug, his mother, the miracle stone. How much he lost or gained from single little moments. Some good, some bad. He watched her as she looked anywhere but at him.

He led her down a long stark hallway. All that was down here was storage rooms. Everything from printer cartridges to extra thread to the show pieces from past runway lines was kept here. It was concrete walls all painted white. Nothing like the well appointed offices and workrooms above. He liked it because it was like seeing the side of the business where it didn't pretend to be more important than the rest of the world. Even fashion designers needed printers and new pencils.

"My mind is full of what-ifs today, but it doesn't matter. You were going to help me pick a dress," she said with a shake of her head. She gave him a big grin. It was a little bit forced but he knew all about putting a good face on so he didn't push her.

"If we really wanted to make a splash, I could go in the dress," Adrien said pushing open a room labeled Spring 2014-Present.

"Whoa," she said but it wasn't at the prospect of him in a dress. He grinned at her as she stepped into the room ahead of him. He'd grown up not just in fashion but at the top of fashion. Gowns that cost more than a car weren't something that even gave him pause but Marinette liked fashion. She cared about this stuff. He knew exactly what dress he wanted to give her but he let her go through the racks. Pulling out plastic covered silks and asking him before she opened anything to look at them.

"This is from the New York show in 2014," she said, "I remember it. The colour's called Banana Cream which sounds stupid but it's still popular. It's made it down to the department store lines too. I think I have a cardigan this colour."

Banana Cream was actually originally used in the 2009 Milan show, it just didn't catch on for a few more years. He had named it. He had been eight. His mother had still been there to convince his father that letting something go to runway with a child's name on it was adorable. She'd also had him a shirt made up in the same colour. It looked terrible on him - almost the exact same colour as his hair - but he had loved it.

"Not the right one for you though," he said instead of telling her the story. Today wasn't about his childhood, it was about her.

"No and you can't wear a dress that old to an event like this but this thing is a piece of fashion history," Marinette told him.

"Come on, I've got other ones for ou to look at," he said.

"I am not going to fit into half of this stuff," she said, "And not just because I'm too short."

"We'll have to make alterations but I know this girl who has access to the design labs and probably even knows how to use the big sewing machines," he said.

"You want me to modify one of these?" she squeaked.

"They're out of style and all for tall scrawny people, you can't just wear it off the rack," he said.

"I can't alter it! It isn't from a thrift shop! That dress is worth thousands of dollars!" she said.

"I got permission," he said.

It took a little more cajoling and debating before she agreed but only if it wasn't a runway gown. That was a little bit disappointing. A piece of him had wanted to see what she would do if she was redoing a dress like that. This was the girl who had once made a pigeon hat for a school design competition. Pigeon hats were not classic. His father's designs were always intended to be classic. As far as Adrien had ever been able to figure out, classic was another word for boring. It would be nice to see what someone genuinely creative would do with one of his father's designs.

He paused behind a rack to pull out his phone and send a message to Ladybug, "What are your thoughts on feathers as a fashion statement?"

"Your mind is a very bizarre place. I don't know if I want you to text whatever you're thinking anymore. I am going to block your number," came the almost immediate reply.

"Or you could meet me at seven and wear something with feathers. Like a boa or a showgirl costume," he sent, typing one handed so he could pretend to still be looking at dresses if Marinette came around the corner.

"Are you asking me to dress up like a cat toy? Maybe I should bring you some mice too?" she sent back.

"I do not eat mice but we can play if you want," he told her and then he had made it to the end of the row and he held out some of the dresses he had found for Marinette to look at while he put his phone away. She was lost in her own little world again. Her bag held between both hands but with a half smile on her face. That was better than she had been in the elevator.

She shut down three of his four selections and after looking at the hem on the fourth, sent it back too. She knew what she was looking for and he hadn't found it yet. He was scrambling to find a replacement for the gown he'd been imagining for her. Finally, while going through the mock-ups for an evening wear line that was only two years old, he found something almost as good. It was exactly the right colour but a very different style.

"You can change anything you want about it, but I'm going to recommend you start with this thing on the neckline," he said holding it out. Dark pink, not red but nearly as rich. Soft, floaty fabric. He couldn't picture Marinette in something clinging and she hadn't picked a single dress like that out for herself as she'd gone through the racks. She would look good in something with a dropped neckline and fabric that hugged close to her body but he wasn't getting the impression she would feel comfortable in it.

She took it from him and held it up to herself. She considered it in a mirror for a long time and then flipped it inside out and started looking at the seams. Adrien dealt in finished clothing. He had no idea what she was looking for.

"It's short," she said.

"But it's all flouncy, short is only bad if it looks trashy, this will look cute. Besides, it isn't that short," he said holding it up to her again. It was inside out but it was her colour and he didn't want to loose this argument. It hung most of the way to her knees and he didn't get why she thought it was too short, "Unless you're secretly a nun. You don't strike me as the nun-type."

"These, model boy, are hips," she said pointing, "And by some magic or maybe surgery, it could be surgery, everyone who works as a model does not seem to have any. In order to make it fit over my hips, I am going to lose length."

He considered that and then realized that in considering that he had been looking a little more closely at her legs than might be polite. He dragged his eyes up and said, "Well, at least they're very nice hips," because he'd just been flirting with Ladybug and apparently hadn't put Chat Noir back into his box.

Marinette turned scarlet and exhaled hard like she was trying to push her embarrassment out. She turned back to the dress, fussing with a hemline. Adrien dropped himself into a nearby folding chair and attempted to apologize.

"I might have been sending suggestive text messages to someone else and forgot who I was talking to," he said, "I didn't mean to be rude. I really did mean it as a compliment but I am very sorry. I will not say anything like that again."

"I wouldn't have thought of you as the suggestive text message type," Marinette said.

"I'm not, not with most people," he said.

"I'll go with this one," she said more to the dress than to him. She cut off the other conversation completely and he was grateful to have it go. "You're sure neither Stefan nor Elijah is going to scream at me if I start cutting it up?"

"The dress is yours. You can do anything you want to it. And if they do complain, blame me and they can come yell at me instead," he said.

"Thank you, Adrien, really, thank you," she said gathering up the dress in its cover and turning to look at him, "And I hope it works out with whoever you're flirting with."

She turned and headed back towards the door. He hurried along to catch up, turning out lights and straightening up as they went.

"I hope so too," he said in the elevator on the way back up and her eyes darted up to his face in the mirror and then away again. She was disappearing back into her own little world again. He leaned over and nudged her with his shoulder. She jumped and gave him a confused look. She wasn't that kind of friend. Not yet, but he really wanted her to be someone he could joke around with.

He asked, "Why weren't we friends back in school?"

"Because you're famous and beautiful and make me nervous," she said and then turned that bright pink colour again as she shook her head like she could shake the words off.

"I'm not beautiful and being famous is overrated and I'm not worth making anyone nervous. Especially someone like you. I'm incapable of having a normal conversation with anyone and my only major talent is my bone structure. You're going to be on the runways by the time your thirty," he said.

The elevator came to a stop and instead of getting out she turned to him. Her face was still pink across her cheekbones but she met his eyes which she hadn't done since he'd made the hips comment. She went from shy and awkward to direct in the blink of an eye.

"You're on your way to being one of the best at what you do and you're not even twenty five yet. And don't tell me it's because you have good cheekbones. Lots of people have good cheekbones. There's skill in what you do and on top of it all, even though you didn't have to, you're in university. Studying something with lots of math according to Pietro. He seems to think this is a reason that you're a boring nerd but it's not, Adrien, it's impressive. Don't let anyone make you think less of yourself. It's impressive. You're impressive," she said and then she turned and ducked out of the elevator.

They had stood there long enough that the doors nearly closed on her. Adrien was left watching the space where she had been as the doors slid back in and showed him nothing but a reflection of his own face.


	13. Interlude: Phone Calls with Alya 2

"How did dress shopping with the hot boy go?" Alya asked instead of saying hello.

"Good, it's gorgeous. Even the fabric would cost more than I make in 3 months and he told me I can do anything I want to it. I've got an Agreste original sitting on my bed and Adrien tells me I should chop it up and remake it however I like," she said.

"Sounds like fun," Alya said.

"He also told me I have nice hips," Marinette said.

"What the hell kind of compliment is that? First shoe size and now random body compliments. I need to talk to him," Alya asked.

"I don't know. He's so awkward. I always thought he was charming but maybe that's just because I couldn't speak to him without my brain shutting down. Aren't models supposed to be suave? He always seems so put together in interviews but he just sort of bumbles through conversations like he's constantly thinking about ten things all at once," Marinette said.

"And you think it's adorable," Alya said.

"It is adorable," Marinette sighed.

"Should I sing the song for you?" Alya said.

"The song?" Marinette said.

"The 'you've got it so bad' song," Alya said.

"No, that's not a real song and I don't want you to to mock me to music. What's he studying?" Marinette asked.

"Electric something or other. It's all math and if you get it wrong then you blow yourself up, that kind of thing. He's modeling his way through an engineering degree because I think he hates himself. That's the only theory I've come up with that makes any sense," Alya said.

Marinette sighed and remembered the expression on his face when he'd said that he wasn't worth making anyone nervous. Alya was joking but the way that he'd said it had made her think that maybe he really didn't like himself much and that thought made her chest hurt.

"Earth to Marinette!" Alya said through the phone.

"Sorry," she said.

"How are Jackass and Trollface?" Alya asked.

"Adrien told me I can send Elijah after him if I get into any trouble with the dress. I think this proves he's a saint of some sort. No one volunteers to speak to Elijah for any reason. He's the most miserable person I have ever met. If he didn't wear such boring suits, I'd be pretty sure that Ladybug and Chat Noir should be sent after him. Even the Akuma have more interesting outfits than he does. And he's a fashion designer," Marinette said.

The conversation wove its way onto other things. Alya's blog. Marinette's mother's worries. Alya's classes. TV shows. Some internet meme involving cats in bow ties that Marinette hadn't even seen because she spent all her time sewing and worrying about sewing. She wasn't even sure how she was going to find time to spend an hour a day purifying akuma.

"I need some advice," she said, interrupting Alya's explanation of why the bowtie thing was funny.

"Anything," Alya said, "Is this about a certain blonde?"

"Before I tell you anything you need to repeat after me," Marinette said and Alya agreed.

She made Alya repeat: "I swear I will not ask for any names or identifying details and if I do, may lightning strike me down."

"That's ominous but yes, I promise I won't ask for any names, tell me this story," Alya said.

"I kissed a boy I shouldn't have kissed," Marinette said.

"What?! Who… Ok, no names but WHAT?!"

"You know when you think you know someone and they're just a friend. Very much just a friend. But then you see them again and it's been years and they're the same but also different," she said.

"I really want to ask you for names right now," Alya said.

"I know, that's why I made you swear first," Marinette said, "But he was there and he was all warm and so much gentler than I ever thought he could be. He kissed me on the top of the head and it was cute. He's never cute like that. He's the kind of flirty that's just obnoxious."

"So why put up with him at all?" Alya asked.

"Because he's my," she couldn't figure out what word to put in there. Partner was what she wanted to use but that would open up so many questions that she wasn't willing to answer. "He's my friend. I trust him. I like him. I even missed his horrible jokes when I was away. My god, I missed him so much."

She paused, shaking her head and setting her jaw even though Alya wasn't there to see it, "But we're not like that."

"We're not like that either, should I be worried you are going to kiss me?" Alya asked.

"If you cuddle up close like that then yeah, maybe. I can't be trusted! I have idiot lips, they do what they want," Marinette said.

"That sounds dangerous. But I am safe, I don't cuddle. You would be a cuddler. You look like a cuddler," Alya said.

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Lots of people cuddle. That's not the problem. The problem is that I've probably ruined everything forever. I want to go back to being friends. I want things to be like they were where we were together without it being complicated, you know?" Marinette said.

"So not a good kiss then," Alya said.

"What? That's not what this is about," Marinette said.

"Was it a good kiss?" Alya asked.

"Why do I talk to you? I am not dignifying that with a response," she said.

"So a very good kiss," Alya said.

"Ugh," Marinette said instead of answering, "I've got to go."

"Very very good. This is interesting. Just as you're reconnecting with your high school crush. It's all very dramatic. You should probably kiss him again. You need to kiss someone three times to be sure," Alya said.

"You're making that up," Marinette said.

"True facts. Learned it when I moved into the dorms. Never take a boy home until you have had three test kisses," Alya said.

"What kind of school do you go to that they teach you things like that in the dorms? I'm not kissing him again. I am not. I was temporarily insane and he will never forgive me as it is. I am not doing it again. And I am not looking for anyone to take home. Stop," Marinette said.

"And you should probably take Adrien out for a test drive too. He's probably kissed a lot fewer people than the magazines would have you think but inexperience doesn't mean he won't be good. There is a certain innate skill in kissing that people always discount," Alya said.

"We're talking about boys not cars," Marinette said.

"Yes, boys are less predictable than cars which is why you want to do three test kisses and most cars only need one test drive," Alya said.

"I have to go to a thing," Marinette said.

"A kissing thing?" Alya asked.

"No," Marinette said with a little too much force.

"If there is any kissing, I expect details, even if you won't tell me mystery boy's name," Alya said.

"Whoops, bad connection, I'm losing you and never calling you back, bye!" Marinette hung up on Alya's laughter.


	14. The Rooftop

Ladybug was back in Paris and everybody knew. She was not hanging around after attacks to do interviews or smile for pictures but she was there. The attacks were coming thick and fast. In the three weeks since she had been back there had been ten of them. Adrien couldn't remember the last time there had been so many. It was exhausting but at the end of each battle, Ladybug put it all back the way it had been before.

"What we need to do is find this Hawkmoth," Ladybug said after a battle with an Akuma whose name Chat hadn't even figured out. He had used big fans to blow things around and it would have been comical if the things he was blowing around hadn't been cars and buses and at least three vendor carts. Chat had been hit in the face with what he was pretty sure had been falafel.

They were hidden away from the news crews wandering the streets looking for wreckage to report in front of but Ladybug was back and there was nothing for them to find. When she had been away, the news broadcasts had been far more sensational. Destruction and mayhem. Now they had to report from empty streets and cleaned up parks and buildings without holes.

"We've tried everything," Chat said without looking away from the street.

"So we try again. Maybe if we release an Akuma and follow it back?" she suggested.

They sat on a rooftop, her feet dangling and his tucked up under him like he really was a cat. The longer he spent as Chat Noir, the more he found himself doing things like that without thinking. He sat down properly and dropped his feet over the edge so they dangled beside hers. Her legs were so much shorter than his were, even her feet were little. He might have said something about her tiny bug feet but he knew she could kick his ass without trying so he kept his mouth shut.

"They don't go back, they go find someone else to infect. I tried that one," Chat said.

She sighed and stared out over the city. It had been a short battle. They had found their rhythm again and they were both better than they had been when they had been younger.

"The rest of the world calls Paris a city under siege. People would be so excited or scared when I told them I grew up in Paris. It was like I grew up in an adventure novel or a war zone," she said.

"Two kinds of people, I guess," he said.

"It would be nice to have Paris actually be a safe place again," she said.

"It will be," he said.

"Such confidence, kitty cat," she said.

"Paris has you, has me, has us, that's enough to be confident about," he said.

"And Paris has Hawkmoth," she said with a hand wave at the city below them, "There are bad things the world over. Things like the Akuma but everywhere else they're natural. Just like little bundles of evil that build up and get into a person. Rare and strange and awful but like a disease. No where else has a monster who makes them."

"We're just lucky," Chat said.

"You're definition of lucky is different from mine," she said.

"If you let me take you home, we can talk about getting lucky," he said.

She snorted and shot him a look that was a little bit disgusted. He gave her his best roguish grin and raised an eyebrow. She stared back at him. She looked at him hard with her lips pressed together and her eyes just slightly narrowed. He remembered that she had kissed him once and it almost made the smile falter into something blushing and stammering.

Then she laughed and braced a foot against his hip and her back against the chimney she had been leaning against. He raised both eyebrows in a question but then she finished bracing herself and grinned at him. He realized too late what she was doing.

She kicked him off the ledge.

There was a balcony below that he landed on in a heap, taking a flowerpot down with him and making the woman in the kitchen nearby scream. He attempted to put the pot back in place and tripped over a basket of washing waiting to either be hung out or taken in and nearly fell off the balcony again but he was laughing the entire time.

Ladybug was gone by the time he got back onto the rooftop but when he got to the street and transformed back into himself, there was a text message on his phone, "That's as lucky as you're going to get."

He typed up, "I'm the luckiest cat on the planet," but didn't send it.

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

Today we have a window into the editing process: "Chat had been hit in the face with what he was pretty sure had been falafel." What even are verb tenses? I have tried parsing this sentence, re-writing it, rewriting it again and you know what? This is what stays. *makes loud fart noise at editing process* (I still don't know if it is right. I honestly don't know. Are the clauses both past perfect? Should they be? Is "he was" the right tense? I have been staring at it too long). *chucks it into fire* aka *post and run*

I started a diploma program this week. During the transition it is leaving me with less mental energy for writing but hopefully once I settle, I'll be able to get back to regular writing time. I actually took this afternoon off to spend with my stories. It was a good idea.

Also I know this scene is super short. I'm actually going to post two today (so you people who manage to read it as soon as it goes up, see you again in a few minutes for the second one). I couldn't combine the topics/settings and I refuse to cut this scene because I love her kicking him off the roof SO MUCH so two little chapters it is.

I am also wordy and attention seeking tonight so you get long rambley authors notes.


	15. The Lunch Buddies

His life had settled into some kind of normal. They were working their way through his collection of Akuma and the empty jars were piling up. He had started telling her in his little stream on consciousness text messages what he was going to collect instead: shiny rocks or stamps (but only one per jar) or earrings or - her suggestion - plush mice.

Adrien's days fell into a rhythm around all the time he was spending as Chat Noir. He didn't sleep enough. He dragged his way through the math unit from hell only to have the next one be even harder and the project in his design class needed twice as much work as he had been planning for. The fall show had entered that strange period where everyone but the models were busy as bees and the models had nothing to do until the actual runway rehearsals started. But they were coming. Hours of rehearsals and makeup tests and slight reordering of who went first that threw everyone into a tailspin of bruised egos and debates on colour clashes.

While he had the time, Adrien threw everything into school, trying to get as much done as he could before he lost what little was left of his free time to the winter show.

"I still don't know how you do it," Nino said. They both had Tuesday afternoons off from classes and had started a tradition of meeting at a little restaurant between their campuses. They ate the kind of food the dietitians would have died to know that Adrien had even been in the same room as.

"I'm only taking half the full course load. It's going to take me four or five years to finish even with everything I take in the summer," Adrien said waving a fry in the air.

"Still, if I was filthy rich, I don't think I'd bother with classes. You could spend all day playing video games and dating hot women, instead Calculus. Who takes Calculus if they have any other choices?" Nino pointed at Adrien's pile of books. He had another class at four that afternoon.

"I'd like to someday live on something other than my father's legacy," Adrien said. "And we both know you'd get bored a week into doing nothing but playing video games. You suck at video games."

Nino had laughed at that and let the conversation go but it clung to Adrien sometimes. He could make his life easier if he let school go, even just for a few years and come back to it when he had more time. But a piece of him feared that he would never go back. If he stopped now, he'd never be anything but a model and then someday a former model. Only ever Gabriel's son.

His other lunch buddy never actually offered any advice on it but her very existence was a testament to not giving up. He didn't need to go into the office as many days as he did but if he got there at 12:30, he could be almost guaranteed to find Marinette in the lunchroom. If she wasn't in the lunchroom, she'd be up in one of the workrooms, figuring over some problem and forgetting she needed to eat.

All he wanted was out of fashion and all she wanted was into it.

"Alya tells me you're studying electrical engineering," Marinette said. She sat on the stool behind a design table and ate the yogurt he had brought her. She sat well back from the table so there wasn't any chance she could spill on the diagrams laid out there.

"I started in engineering but it wasn't really for me. All technical and nothing else. I'm in an architecture stream right now though it'll probably take a masters if I ever want to work as an architect," he said leaning against the table and eating a fruit salad. His dietitian was pleased with how many lunches he was eating on site, she thought he was taking his diet more seriously. He did not argue with her. He had a chocolate bar in his bag to eat as soon as he was sure no one would see him.

"So the design thing runs in the family?" Marinette asked.

"I guess so but buildings are different from clothes," he said.

"Not really," she said and then she set her yogurt aside and spun back to the work table and made him turn around so she could explain jacket construction to him. He understood her point but he listened less because he cared about the diagrams in front of her than because he liked how much she cared about it. She had a dream and the internship under Stefan and Elijah hadn't crushed it yet.

"Are you excited for the big event?" he asked after conceding the point that clothing construction and building design weren't so wildly different. He lingered to talk even though he was out of time and he was going to have to hop a bus or run as Chat Noir if he hoped to make it back to campus in time for class.

The Gala wasn't such a looming event when he had her coming with him. He'd been to enough events like that that they didn't stress him out anymore. Marinette turned to look directly at him before fiddling with the papers on the table. She gathered them and tapped them into a nice neat stack and then started laying them out again.

"I'm terrified and I'm going to trip and fall in the chocolate fountain," she said.

"You won't. You'll be incredible, charming and clever and everyone will love you," he said waving off her concerns. She gave him one of those strange looks that he could never quite interpret. Almost like he had embarrassed her but not quite. He waved that off too and asked, "Can I see how the dress is coming?"

"No," she said.

"Is this like a wedding day thing?" he asked with his best Chat Noir grin so she knew he was teasing. She narrowed her eyes at him. A little glare before she rolled her eyes.

"No! It's an it's not finished thing," she said, "I don't have any time. I didn't know when I signed up to be an intern that intern was a code word meaning human sewing machine. When the little signs on the programs at the winter show brag that everything is handmade in-house, they mean that I did it."

It started out as a complaint but she stopped and smiled down at the designs on the table and repeated it, "I did it. I made something that's going to be on one of the biggest Paris runways. I didn't design it but I made it. How many people can say that?"

"Not many. And it's going to be beautiful," Adrien told her. He was late and couldn't stay to watch her smile at her handiwork.

"I hope so," she said.

"It will. We're lucky to have you here," he said.

Before he left he gave her a one armed hug. She watched him go with that nearly embarrassed look on her face again. He waved from the door and tossed her his chocolate on the desk so she'd have something to eat when she forgot her next meal. That got him a smile to carry along with him while he rushed across the city.


	16. The Chase and the Race

"Meet me somewhere?" said the text.

He was sitting with his homework when his phone buzzed and he almost didn't pick it up. He'd told everyone else to leave him alone but he hadn't sent that message to Ladybug. He sat with the phone in one hand and his pencil in the other. If he were responsible, he would have sent her something back asking if it was an emergency and put the phone away for anything but impending doom.

They - well, he - had declared that certain days were off for the project to clear out the jars. She'd set a pace that had worried him in that first week, leaving her exhausted every time. This was one of their break days. It should have been enough to know that he would see her that weekend but it wasn't. His responsibility to his studies couldn't outweigh the little thrill that she was inviting him someplace. It didn't matter where.

He sent, "Do you want to come here?"

"No, I want to run, come with me," she sent.

He dropped the pencil and flipped the book shut to go find Plagg.

Chat Noir met her not too far from his apartment. She was bouncing on her toes and flashed him just a hint of smile when he hopped up beside her in a crouch. She'd chosen one of the highest buildings in the district so Paris was spread out around them like a carpet of lights. He looked past her toward the Eiffel Tower and the lines of traffic, white and red running up the boulevards. She was still bouncing in the corner of his vision. He tilted his head back to look up at her.

"Race or chase?" he asked.

She gave him a real smile then. It hadn't been so long ago but it felt like a game they hadn't played since they were little children. It was like a pick-up game of soccer in one of the old cobblestone squares or brushing the dust off some box in a cupboard and opening it find treasures you had collected when you were small. They'd both been a little shorter then and she'd laughed more easily but just saying the words made him feel like not so much had changed.

"Chase," she said.

And then she was moving. She dropped and off the edge of the roof top and flung herself towards the street. He knew this neighbourhood better than she did so he let her get a little bit ahead of him. He hadn't been betting on her yo-yo giving her that much of an advantage and it took him three blocks to just catch up with her.

She swung in and out of patches of light. He barely heard her when she touched down on rooftops. He almost lost her more than once only to catch a flash of red out of the corner of his eye and have to scramble after her.

They were most of the way to Notre Dame before he caught up. He hit her out of the air as she made a jump from one rooftop to the next. He caught her around the middle but she didn't let go of the yo-yo string. They ended up hanging halfway down an alley, swinging wildly back and forth with him latched around her waist. He had a landing planned out but it had depended on her just jumping. The damned string had thrown everything off.

"Damn cat," she said looking down at him.

He cocked a grin at her. His arms were locked around her waist which put his face right at chest level and gave him very interesting things to look past as he met her gaze. With her free hand she cuffed him up the back of his head but it was gentle and made him wiggle an eyebrow at her.

She was laughing as she lowered them down behind a florist. He touched down first and took her weight rather than just letting her drop down beside him. He held her and waited for her to step back but she just stayed there in his arms with her hands on his shoulders and his around her waist.

"You're slower than you used to be," she said.

"You're fur-ster," he shot back.

"Fur-ster?" she repeated, "For that one I am going to make you chase again."

"I could chase you forever," he said and standing in the dark like this, with his arms around her, it felt a little too honest. She was all shadows, he couldn't see her expression but she had her head tilted up to look at him.

"Give me a head start then," she finally said.

"I'll count to nine. One for each life I'd spend with you," he said.

"You've gotten even sappier in your old age," she said.

"One," he said lowering his face to hers but by the time he got to, "Two," she was off and running again.

It took him longer to find her this time. They played it less as a game of tag and more of hide and seek. He'd flick open the communicator to make hers beep and then follow the sound. Like a complicated rooftop game of Hotter or Colder. He heard her swear once but she'd disappeared before he found her.

"Where are you, Bug?" he called out but he got no answer but he heard her footsteps down an alley. He used the baton to jump the building and landed in her way as she exited out into the square. She was glancing behind her when he caught her. He picked her up and spun her around. She struggled and kicked him hard in the leg before she realized it was him.

He dropped her back to the ground and glared down at her, rubbing his shin.

"Gentlemen don't grab ladies in the street," she said.

"You may be a Lady, I never made any such claims about myself," he said.

"Again? We can trade," she said.

"As much as I like chasing you around Paris, you're supposed to be taking the night off," he said.

"I'd rather run around Paris," she said with a sigh.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She looked up at him. The square around the cathedral was well lit but not well traveled at this time of night. They would have been visible to anyone walking by but he would have taken that over not being able to see her. Her expression was accusatory. She had wanted to drown whatever it emotion it was and she wasn't happy to have him dragging it out into the open. He started to back peddle immediately, hands up and a big step back from her.

"Or I shut up," he said.

"I had a fight with my mother," she admitted after a drawn out silence in which he was sure he'd made her angry.

"I will listen or I will knock you off another building with an ill-timed pounce, your choice," he said.

"Come on," she said and then she was off across the square. He followed her, she wasn't moving fast enough for it to be another chase. She led him up to the church but not inside. Instead she climbed up the side of the Cathedral. They helped each other up, yo-yo and baton out so the could swinging along to hand holds until they had made it to the belfry. She dropped down on the ledge and when he sat beside her, she leaned over and put her head on his shoulder.

"Talking then?" he said.

"In a minute," she said.

She took his hand and played with his fingers and his claws. Her fingers traced the outline of them. It was shattering and he couldn't quite figure out why. It made him jumpy and nervous. They were sharp and he'd never been quite so aware of them before. He watched her fingers on his and kept his attention on breathing and trying not to do something unwelcome. Like kiss her. He was trying really hard not to pull her in and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.

"My father died," she said without looking up at him. His attention snapped back to her. Her fingers were still on his, fiddling with his ring and his claws like it was a nervous tic, like he was an extension of her instead of something separate.

"I-" he started but he didn't know. Adrien knew. Chat Noir didn't, "I'm so sorry."

"In the fires on that day," she spit the word day out like it was an insult. He gently pulled his nearer hand away from her and wrapped it around her back. He gave her his other hand instead and she took it without pause and fiddled with his cuffs as she kept talking.

"My mother thinks Paris is dangerous. Terribly dangerous. It's why we left. She wouldn't stay in the city. She wouldn't even stay in the country. We lost our business. She didn't think we had any reasons to stay in Paris. She decided that we would go to live with my aunt. I argued and fought and I think I broke her heart a little more with it. So I apologized and tried to make the best of it. I couldn't stay in France alone and I couldn't leave her," she said.

"She wants you to come home," he said.

"I had her convinced that for my career, I needed to be in Europe and I didn't want to leave her behind. I had talked her into Milan. I thought maybe, with time, I could convince her to move to Cannes and then maybe Lyon, someplace that's just a train ride away," she said.

That didn't seem like it would get her upset enough to be calling him up in the middle of the night. He rubbed her shoulder and waited for her to assemble the next part of the story.

"There were three Akuma attacks this week and she's sure that means that the city is about to fall into riots and horrors and I will die if I stay here. That isn't new. But she reminded me in detail today about how I can't rely on superheroes to protect me. 'We both know that Ladybug is no guarantee,' and even though I have heard her say it a hundred times before, it's a reminder every time. She's right and I hate it," she had trailed off to a whisper.

"You're not perfect," he said and he swung around on the ledge so he was straddling the stone and could take her face in his hands. She flinched hard as though hearing him say it was a betrayal all on its own. He was an idiot but he shook his head and slid a little closer and whispered, "Look at me."

"I know, trust me, I know," she said meeting his eyes and looking at him with wary eyes. She was annoyed or maybe that expression was betrayal and his mind was spinning to try and fix it. He loosened his hold so she could pull away and while she had tensed, she let him touch her. He took a deep breath and stroked her cheek right below the mask before he started to speak.

"You were just a kid, all the super powers in the world don't change that. You were in high school and you have saved hundreds of lives. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. You are not perfect, there are limits to everything even your powers, but you are incredible," he said.

"Miraculous?" she said with a wry little smile that didn't make it to her eyes.

"That too," he said leaning in and touching his forehead to hers before he drew back and kept talking. Now that he started he wasn't sure where the words were going to stop. "You got up after a tragedy like that and you keep fighting. There's a monster of a man out there who wants to steal your miracle stone, who's willing to burn a city to the ground to steal that power and you don't give up. That's incredible. You're very impressive. Grief makes people angry and so does worry. She loves you and she's worried about you but no matter what she says, it doesn't make any of this your fault."

"You got through all of that without a single pun," she said.

"I am capable of restraining them," he said.

"Thank you," she said, "For all of that, for coming out with me, not just for the lack of puns."

She surprised him again by curling back in close. Her arm around his waist, her knees tossed over his so she was halfway into his lap. She looked out at the city and rested her cheek on his shoulder again. His hands fluttered because he didn't know where to put them. She reached out and took one of them back and linked her fingers with his. He held on and wrapped his other arm around her back, exactly the way she was holding onto him because if she had started it, he could be sure that it was something she was comfortable with.

He didn't pull away until she did. It was a long time, but it didn't feel long enough. The traffic had dwindled down to almost nothing as most people had gone home to bed. He could have stayed there until dawn but instead she untangled herself slowly. Before she had moved out of his reach, while her hand was still on his back and her fingers were still tangled with his, she paused to meet his eyes.

The moment was a soap bubble and he wasn't thinking. She was so close. He leaned his head down, his nose bumped hers before he realized what he was doing but by then she'd taken over. Her mouth came up to touch his. The bubble held, it wasn't really a kiss yet, neither of them quite sure enough to change it.

"This is a bad idea," she whispered.

"I like bad ideas," he said.

They hadn't pulled away, she was still breathing against his mouth. He felt her form each word but it was a feather light near touch and he wanted so much more than that. He also wanted to pour out promises and reassurances and declarations of every possible kind. He wanted the kiss.

"I'm using you," she said.

"Well, I'm taking advantage," he shot back.

"Bad idea," she said.

"So are rooftop chases and breaking and entering into religious landmarks. We're full of bad ideas tonight," Chat told her and that she was still there, so close. She wasn't pushing back or pulling away made him bolder and he managed to whisper, "Kiss me?" even if it did come out like a question. She answered him without words.

She didn't kiss him gently this time.

Her hand slid up his back and wrapped around his neck and she pulled him in close. He liked the taste of her mouth and pushed back into every touch. He still had enough of a hold on her to swing her into his arms. He was sitting on the parapet and hadn't considered what pulling her closer meant. She didn't seem to mind. She settled onto his lap without breaking the kiss and he grabbed hold of her waist.

It felt precarious and he was struck by the fear of dropping her. She and loosely wrapped her legs around him and he could imagine her crossing her ankles somewhere behind his back. He kept one arm locked around her but the other slid up her back until he could play with her hair. He stopped there because she'd opened her mouth and pulled him into a deeper kiss and he temporarily lost the ability for all other thought. Her tongue against his made him smile so much it was hard to kiss her back. She gave up on him with a giggle and kissed his cheek, his jaw, his neck instead.

"I need to go home," she said when she'd kissed her way back up to his ear and was resting with her cheek against his and her whole body wrapped around him.

"But you're coming back tomorrow," he said.

"No, you told me you had some sort of event tomorrow," she said.

"Damn it," he muttered. Gala. Stupid awful charity gala. That's why he was supposed to spend tonight doing homework because he would have to spend all of Friday night with his father and the fashion industry. He buried his face in her shoulder and made an annoyed sound.

"Day after," she said.

"That is barely tolerable," he said.

"You're the one with the event," she said.

"Rub it in, why don't you?" he said and even with his mounting annoyance at the prospect of twenty four hours without seeing her, he was giddy. The Gala would be fine, he'd have Marinette to distract him from all the awful people and provide excuses for him to duck out of networking opportunities. Everything would be fine. He had his arms full of reasons that everything would be fine.

He tilted her chin up and pulling her into place so he could kiss her again, quick and smiling.

"Shall I walk you home?" he asked.

"So chivalrous! No, but I'll race you back to yours," she said with a mischievous grin. She wormed her way out of his grip and dropped over the edge of their perch. Of course she landed on a lower level without even wavering. His worry over dropping her had been completely unfounded. She leaned her elbow on a gargoyle's head and looked up at him to be sure he was following then she was off and running again.

He stared after her for too long before he realized he was going to lose any chance of catching up. He scrambled after her with an unshakable smile plastered across his face.

* * *

 **Author Notes because I am a chatty dork** :

This chapter was no where in my outline. I was having a conversation with Gidge about Mari leaving and realized I hadn't really laid it out so I started writing a conversation that went into that a little more. There will eventually be another one where we get into what she told him in that letter and what she's been thinking for the last 5 years.

But still, this was all a surprise when I actually started writing it. ANGST, fluffy idiots playing tag, I got to look at so many pictures of Notre Dame to get this situated in my head and then I had no intention of there being kissing. I was planning on drawing out Adrien's angsty pining and wondering if the kiss was a one time thing but then I was writing and the kissing happened so I left it in because it made me happy and it's been like five chapters since there was any kissing, that's too long.

I would say we're about two thirds done at this point for those of you keeping score at home.

Also I am aware that updating on a Thursday morning while everyone is at work or school is probably not best but it's when I had the time. [Hi to the people who clicked through that alert email anyways, love you. Also to people who aren't in the Americas and live in mythical other time zones. I love you too.]


	17. The Limo

Half the point of a charity gala was the opportunity to show off. Black tie always looked the same but at least it looked good. He had hired a car and was now leaning against the side of it outside a dormitory of a school he didn't attend. Showing off was the point of the gala but standing here, as people walked by on their way to class and gawked, it was awkward.

He signed two autographs before he decided to give up and hide in the car. Marinette wasn't ready because he'd come to pick her up early rather than sit around in the apartment, thinking about Ladybug and trying not to ruin his suit. Not that sitting in his apartment and thinking about Ladybug wasn't wonderful but if he didn't force himself to think of other things then he would just spend the entire night wrapped up in memories and his rampant imagination.

His phone rang and he picked it up without looking at the screen.

"Good evening, M. Agreste," the voice on the other end of the line said.

"Hello," he said frowning. The voice was familiar but the words were too formal to be who he thought it was.

"I need you to help me with a project," she said.

"Did you really just call me Monsieur Agreste?" he asked smiling at the closed window between the driver and himself. His face was reflected back in the dark glass. He looked older than he expected. He looked a little too much like his father. He wanted to run his hands through his carefully styled hair until he had erased any evidence of Gabriel. Alya laughed in his ear, distracting him from that train of thought. Alya was a person who thrived on text messages and blog posts. It was rare to get an actual phone call from her.

"I did, I wanted to start off with the right tone of respect and seriousness," Alya said.

"I, unfortunately do not know who Ladybug is," he said.

"Not the goal of this particular project. This particular project is all about Mlle. Dupain-Cheng," Alya said.

"She's your best friend, Alya," he said.

"And you probably see her more than I do because she does nothing but work and you do nothing but work and you work at the same place. She will tell me nothing and so I need spies. You are now my spy," Alya said.

"I am not accepting a spy job," he said and then hesitated. Curiosity was gnawing at his mind. Maybe he was too much a cat for his own good. He sighed. "What kind of spying are you looking for?"

"I need to know who she's been kissing," Alya said.

Adrien coughed, that was not what he had been expecting, "She hasn't mentioned anyone to me."

"So it isn't you then?" Alya said.

"What? No. Marinette and I are not like that, I spend as much time kissing her as I spend kissing you. Which - unless I got a lot drunker than I thought at Nino's this summer - is not all," he said.

"You got pretty drunk but not that drunk. I would have taken pictures and sold them to TMZ if you had tried to kiss me. Remember that," Alya said.

"This is why our love will never last, Al," he sighed dramatically and she laughed at him. He glanced out the window and said, "I've got to go."

"If you find out anything, I will be forever grateful if you tell me, enjoy your fancy party!" Alya said.

He had seen Marinette coming down the steps and fumbled to hang up on Alya and put his phone away. She had a long jacket on so he couldn't see what she had done to the dress but she had done her hair up in some kind of fancy ponytail so it fell in waves over her shoulder. He climbed out of the car before the driver did. A few people were standing around and he ignored them.

She was blushing a little bit and he let himself wonder about this hypothetical boy who had been kissing her. She hadn't mentioned anyone but he shouldn't have been so surprised. She was adorable and motivated and that kind of smart that snuck up on you. He tried to imagine the type of person she'd fall for. Someone clever and kind and probably handsome.

"Why did you bring a limo?" she hissed when she got closer.

"Hello, Marinette, you look lovely," he said through a grin.

"People are staring," she said.

"It's because we're both beautiful. You more than me," he said with a wink, "And we can't pull up to the Gala in a rented Fiat. I don't think they'd even valet park it. They'd just push it into the river and claim they were doing us a favour."

He bowed and opened the door. She gave him a brief tight lipped look that was almost a glare before getting inside. He sat down across from her and she looked around the car with wide eyes. It was nice even by the standards of limos. He was showing off and her reaction made it worth it. He leaned back against his seat and reached out a foot to kick open the little fridge.

"I am not drinking before I get there, I cry when I'm drunk and I'm wearing enough makeup right now that I can't risk it," Marinette said.

"Welcome to my life," he said, "No emotion or you'll mess up the makeup. And my dietitian would probably be displeased that I was sitting this close to a bottle of wine. Do you know how many calories there are in wine?"

She studied him as the car started to move. She was all black and white except for those blue eyes. The black jacket and a pair of little black heels but her skin was pale. Her hair was dark enough that in the imperfect light of the limousine it blended into her clothing.

He gave her a Chat Noir grin, the kind that Ladybug would punch him for. He was expecting another glare but instead, in one fluid motion, she leaned over pulled out the first bottle she could reach and dropped down on the seat beside him.

"Do you think the dietitian has an invitation?" she asked.

"I doubt it," he said.

"Then let's break some rules, let the make up run," she said.

"Are you having a rebellious day?" he asked.

"Yes, I suppose I am," she said. She leaned over and poured him a glass of some white wine and held it out. He took it carefully, without touching her fingers. She turned back and poured herself one as well and then sat back beside him to take a sip. She did dainty surprisingly well for someone he had seen fall up the stairs on more than one occasion.

"Tell me about this rebellion," he said.

She cut her eyes to him. They were rolling along through rush hour traffic and her campus was far from their destination. He could see the cars moving by through the window behind her. The glass was tinted. No one could see them and it was a little like having their own little bubble where the rest of the world couldn't affect them.

"Do you think you know what you want?" she asked.

"Some days but mostly no, I have no idea," he said.

"I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I had my career planned out, I had picked myself out a husband and even if we hadn't gone on a date yet, I thought I was sure," he laughed at that and she shot him a glare over her wine glass but it was more self deprecating than annoyed. "I had already decided what colour I would paint the bathroom in my first house, I knew exactly what I wanted."

She fell silent for a moment before looking out the window and continuing, "And even after everything that happened, even after moving away, I was still sure that my plan was the best one and everything else was secondary. Then I came back and the other thing, the one I thought I didn't want was waiting for me. The life and the person I thought were just responsibility was right there and I had missed it so much."

"Is this about the person Alya says you've been kissing?" he asked.

She sputtered into her wine.

"Sorry," he said, "I think it was meant to be a secret."

She pulled out her phone and typing one handed, shot off a text message. He didn't have a good enough angle to see what she said but he could guess. It probably involved calling Alya some sort of name. Once the phone had binged to tell her that it had successfully sent, she turned off the sound on the phone and shoved it into her purse.

"Yes, it is about him and no I won't give either of you horrible gossip mongers any details," Marinette said.

"Is he jealous you have a date tonight?" he asked.

"I thought this wasn't a date. You're the one who said it wasn't a date. What about that girl you like to send dirty text messages too?" she asked.

"She probably wouldn't be jealous unless she saw you, you are truly beautiful tonight," he said raising eyebrow.

She blushed at him and some of her tension came back. She had relaxed once they'd started talking and there wasn't anyone to stare at her and wonder if she was someone famous but now her shoulders were drawn in again and she had stopped looking at him. It had seemed like a harmless comment until he had made it. Why was it only with Marinette that he was incapable of keeping a conversation going?

She shook off the nervousness and took another drink of her wine before she looked back at him. She tilted her head rather than turning around and it was adorable.

"You're cuter than he is but he still doesn't have a good reason for being jealous," she said.

"I don't know whether the correct response to that is to feel flattered or to be disappointed," he said.

Marinette elbowed him and they both laughed. He pulled out his phone and made a show of angling himself so that she couldn't see the screen. He said, "If you're keeping secrets, I'll tell you nothing," as he sent Ladybug a message. It didn't really say anything. A joke about pawtographs and not much else. He didn't get a response back but it was nice just to know he could reach out to her while they were apart.

"Is this party going to be fun?" Marinette asked, pulling him back into the conversation.

"Probably not but the food will be fantastic and I'll make sure to introduce you to the guys who work for Chanel. If it's Yvette and Martin, and it's usually them who come to these things, they'll make the price of admission worth it. They're hilarious," he said.

"Just like that, an introduction to the guys who work for Chanel," she said in a mocking tone.

"Stick with me and I'll see if I can't wrangle Armani and Dior as well though the last man I met from Dior tried to seduce me and it wasn't very successful so I'm not on the best terms with that house," he said.

She giggled and asked in a petulant voice, "Are we there yet?"

"No, have more wine," he said.

It made her laugh again but she didn't pour another glass. They rode the rest of the way across the city, shoulder to shoulder and teasing each other for keeping secrets.

* * *

Author Notes:

School is in full swing and kicking my ass, and I'm waiting on results from an interview and I struggle to write through stress but once we catch up to everything I've already written (I'm a good 10 000 words ahead but nothing I have written is the NEXT chapter), updates will even out for a little while.

I'm going to try for once a week but I am not going to make any promises.


	18. The Gala

Adrien had a glass of champagne in one hand and a smile on his face. He'd left Marinette with a junior designer from one of the smaller fashion houses and was watching her from a distance. She had been too comfortable letting him talk when he'd been dragging her around during the cocktail reception. So he had made an excuse and gotten out of the way after making sure that Jacqueline knew that Marinette had designed the dress herself.

It was a good dress. Not too daring but very different. It didn't look anything like the original dress that she had taken home. It was purely hers and it suited her. Cute and flirty with surprising details like the lace she had added in place of the previous collar. She was radiant, especially when the conversation turned to something she was passionate about. She had been talking some specific detail of fabrics in the Valentino line when he left her.

The Gala was held in a chateau outside the city. Every detail was opulent. The bright lights and elaborate glass and metal center pieces weren't quite in keeping with the surroundings but it was beautiful. Adrien didn't know if the building was an imitation or something that had actually been built during the reign of the Sun King. He was trying to figure it out from the arches around the ballroom. He didn't know a lot about historic construction but he knew enough about modern design to be pretty sure the building wasn't new.

"You never get to call me 'jackass' ever again," Liam said coming to stand beside him. He tore his attention away from the walls and stood up a little straighter. He put on his Adrien-the-Model smile even though it was just Liam. He did not want to slip too far away from charming or he was going to say something rude to his father or one of his father's horrible friends.

"You're the sacrificial lamb this year?" Adrien asked, ignoring the comment.

"You, me, Nadine and Orla," Liam said, "We're the walking advertisements for this year's event. It's a good thing we're pretty."

"It is," Adrien said.

Liam's accent hadn't improved and in this room full of people putting trying so hard it was almost comforting to hear him butcher his vowels. French wasn't really a language intended for Irish inflection but Liam didn't let that stop him. He could probably live in Paris for fifty years and still be nearly unintelligible. Adrien cracked a grin at him.

"There are rules about bringing interns to events," Liam said.

"There aren't actually. I had a plus one invitation, I could have brought my cousin or put a hobo in a dress if I really wanted to. She's better company than either of those options," Adrien said.

"Not written rules, just rules," Liam said.

"See how much I care," Adrien said drawing a circle around his face.

He kept his expression intentionally flat. He was the boss's kid and that had always meant that one of the unwritten rules was that he only got polite invitations. He got invited to team building events but not out to the bar afterwards. He wasn't really a member of the little cadre that made up the in-house models. He knew most of the unwritten rules but was pretty sure that they didn't really apply to him.

"The other interns are going to eat her alive for this," Liam said.

That, Adrien hadn't considered. He'd invited her for purely selfish reasons. He hadn't wanted to attend this party alone or worse, with Chloe hanging off his arm and waving at the paparazzi. He hadn't stopped to think how much of an advantage this was for Marinette. It went well above the scope of the intern program. The interns were a competitive group. Most of them didn't like other people being granted things that they couldn't have.

"Hello little Intern," Liam said and Adrien snapped his attention back to see that Marinette had come over to join them. She gave Liam one of her big friendly smiles and Adrien pushed his worries to the side.

If anyone deserved this particular advantage it was her.

"Shall we go find our table?" Adrien asked holding out his arm before her small talk with Liam could stray to topics of conversation he didn't want her to have to put up with.

She gave him an entirely different kind of smile as she looped her arm through his and let him pull her away. Her smiles shone like spotlights for most people but he only ever got them in flashes. He studied her as they walked. She was scanning the crowd, looking over the clothes and marveling a little bit.

He didn't realize what he was doing until he'd leaned over and kissed her temple.

Everything froze.

What was that?

Why had he done that?

She was adorable and wonderful but that wasn't an excuse.

She stopped walking and it tugged him to a stop too.

Sh looked up at him, startled and pretty and confused and he had nothing to say. He'd forgotten how to speak as well as how to behave.

"Adrien, you haven't introduced your girlfriend yet," a voice interrupted the way she was staring up at him with wide alarmed eyes. She put her smile back on and turned to look at the speaker. Adrien smoothed his own emotions off his face to turn and smile at his father.

"Marinette, I'm sure you've met my father, Gabriel Agreste. Father, this is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, she's been an intern at your company for two months now," Adrien said. He bit down hard on his tongue and tried for a close lipped smile. He was digging himself into another lecture on how sarcasm was not proper behaviour in public.

Marinette giggled and it was charming enough that even Gabriel gave her a smile. It wasn't a warm smile but his lips lifted. Adrien wanted to kiss her again. He ignored that thought. Buried it. He squeezed her hand where it was still resting on his arm instead.

"I do believe Adrien had mentioned that he was going to lend you one of my gowns. Evidently not. Who are you wearing?" Gabriel said.

Emotions crisscrossed Marinette's face, surprise, pride, something like terror. She didn't say anything for just a moment too long.

"It's one of her own," Adrien said, "She really is very good."

Marinette beamed through a brief conversation on composition and detailing that Adrien wasn't really paying attention to. She held onto him with one hand and talked with her other. She gestured and grinned and stumbled through some praise of the winter line. Gabriel was serious but seemed to actually be listening to her. He didn't often to listen to anyone who wasn't one of his senior designers and it felt like thin ice.

"I promised Mari that I would introduce her to Wilhelmina before dinner," Adrien said before Gabriel could throw one of his dismissive lines at Marinette. Crushing that smile on her face would be unforgivable and Adrien was pretty sure his father wouldn't even notice that he had done it.

The distraction of the little conversation seemed to have swept Adrien's kiss completely out of her mind. She didn't mention it as she rehashed the conversation. It was easy for him to forget that Gabriel Agreste was a well respected industry leader and seeing him through Marinette's eyes was a little unsettling. Magazine editors and cronies liked Gabriel, Marinette was supposed to be too reasonable and kind for that.

"So who is Wilhelmina?" Marinette asked.

"Oh, I didn't actually mean that. You don't want to meet Wilhelmina," he said.

Marinette, being Marinette, was not to be dissuaded which is how they ended up being harangued by a ninety year old woman wearing couture from the 1950s until the lights dimmed to call everyone to their seats. Marinette tried to keep up her side of the conversation but Wilhelmina didn't so much converse as drive a verbal steamroller. She just talked over any and everyone.

"That was an experience," Marinette whispered as they headed for their table.

"Rite of passage," Adrien said, "Most people meet her at their first show. She spends oceans of money on clothing and so do all her friends but only if she likes you. People are always pouring flattery on her."

"Did she like me?" Marinette asked.

"No idea. No one can actually tell until you suddenly get a check for half a million worth of runway originals," Adrien said with a laugh.

"This is the least sensible industry on the planet, I'm going to go back to school and become a pastry chef. Baked goods make sense," Marinette said.

"You'd probably be good at that too. I bet you'd make those fancy cakes that look like art. You're good at making normal things into art like hats or dresses," he said.

"I am not that good," she said.

"My father couldn't pick out that dress as one of his. He can always pick out one of his," Adrien said, "Besides, you got into this intern program. Our house isn't a part of most of the placement agencies. Your portfolio is picked over by the senior design staff. You're good at fashion and you'd be good at baking and you'd probably be good at auto repair if you decided to do auto repair."

She flashed that smile at him and then looked away at the center piece on the table, "Thank you. I know how difficult it is to get in at Agreste. I know how luck I am. I wasn't actually even eligible. Agreste doesn't take internationals. Ever. I didn't even submit directly here. I think the only reason I got it is because I'm a French citizen and one of the interviewers I met with must have a friend here. I had my heart set on a few houses in New York. I didn't think I'd get anywhere in Europe, certainly not Paris. They even agreed to pay my flight or I never would have been able to come."

"Paris is glad to have you home," he said.

Whatever she was going to say next was lost in a crash.

Before Adrien had even processed what had happened or where the noise had come from, a hand closed on his shoulder. He had stood, lots of people had, Parisians knew what unexpected crashes and distant screaming meant. Marinette was there beside him. Calm. He vaguely remembered that from school. She was always calm as the monsters descended.

"Come with me," a gruff familiar voice said.

Adrien looked up at the same body guard he'd had as a kid. It had caused a fight when he had started refusing to keep a guard first anywhere near his apartment then at university, then anywhere he went. Having the big gorilla standing there behind him was almost nostalgic. Inconvenient because it was unlikely Ladybug would hear about this until it was over so he was going to have to deal with it on his own, but still it was nice to see the man.

"How have you been? How's the wife?" he asked.

"No time for jokes, Mr. Agreste, it is best if we get you out of here," Gorilla said.

"Would you like to be evacuated with me? It's a tradition in..." he asked turning to Marinette.

Marinette was gone.

The crowd had started moving. Adrien could see a pink glow down the hall and whatever Akuma was there was headed towards them. She must have gotten swept into the crowd. He turned, pulling out of the bodyguard's grip and hopped up onto his chair to see where she had gone. Black hair, pink dress, small. She wasn't going to be easy to pick out but he wasn't going to leave her in this crowd as a monster advanced on her.

Gorilla grabbed him by the back of his fancy suit jacket and yanked him back to earth. He forgot that being tall didn't mean he wasn't scrawny enough to be yanked around by someone bigger than him. He stumbled as Gorilla turned them both into the crowd and started to steer him away from the trouble. Gorilla did not let go. He had learned from years of chasing a teenage Adrien that Adrien disappeared in times of trouble if he was released for even a moment.

"Do you see my date?" he asked Gorilla in a conversational tone as he was frog marched towards the door.

"No sir," Gorilla said.

"Think we could pause and go find her?" he asked.

"You need to be taken to safety, those are my orders," he said.

Adrien sighed. That meant he was going to have to get creative. They were out of the main hall now and into the massive entry way of the chateau. It was packed with people pushing for the doors. Akuma attacks didn't happen this far out of the city, no one had been expecting it and everyone was panicking. They were a long way from help.

Pink lightning smashed into the window by the front door and everyone screamed as the glass shattered, even Adrien jumped. The security guards scattered and then scrambled into some kind of formation but they were not going to be any good in this. A bolt of that pink lightning hit a guard and they froze in a pose.

It was almost funny.

The same thing happened to another, then another, then a woman in a black silk gown and it got less funny very quickly. Adrien managed to pivot far enough in Gorilla's hold to see the Akuma itself. He wasn't close enough for details, pink and turquoise and a ridiculous feathered thing on his head but he was recognizable.

"Seriously, Liam?" he said aloud.

"Move," Gorilla lurched him back into the crowd moving towards the exit.

They hadn't made it to the door before the Akuma came swinging sideways over their heads and smashed into the brick work above the window. Adrien winced even though he knew Liam wouldn't remember it later. The crowd was thinning as more people made it outside. As they reached the door someone crashed into Gorilla hard enough that he loosened his hold on Adrien enough that Adrien could twist and drop and leave the man holding nothing but his suit jacket.

"Sorry," he muttered as he rolled away.

He moved sideways across the crowd, weaving and dodging around people and the frozen posers. Plagg had been in his jacket and was now floating along at his heels. In the chaos, he wouldn't be seen. Probably. Hopefully. Adrien was looking for a corner or a hallway to duck into. An old building like this should have had servant's entrances and passageways and all kinds of old corners but the space was too big and he was struggling against the dregs of the crowd.

He looked back up at the Akuma in time to see Ladybug swing off the chandelier and kick him square in the chest. Liam pinwheeled back into the ballroom in a blur of bubblegum colours. She landed not too far from Adrien and he spun and took those two extra steps to be beside her. It was automatic. He didn't even consider that he wasn't Chat. Plagg crawled into his pant leg and sat on his shoe and Adrien could just imagine the grumbling.

She turned to him with the start of a smile and he realized that she had assumed he was Chat as well. She blinked at him twice in surprise.

"Do you come to fashion galas often?" he asked.

"This is my first one, actually. Get outside before he gets back on his feet," she said.

But Liam was already coming at them again and Ladybug grabbed Adrien and swung them both up onto the grand staircase. She shouldn't have been able to lift him, it had been difficult for Gorilla to do but she had the magic of the transformation on her side. She put him down and physically jerked him around until he was facing a hallway of rooms behind a velvet rope that read: "no admittance beyond this point." She gave him a little shove in the middle of the back.

"Go," she said.

"Pendant," he said catching her wrist before she could swing away.

"What?" she turned half her attention back to him but she was watching for the Akuma and didn't really look at him.

"Liam always wears a pendant, that's probably where the butterfly is," he said.

"Right, ok, now go," she gently pulled herself out of his hold and then shoved him toward the empty hallway again. He ducked under the rope and took off down the hall at a run. He winced at every echoing sound from the battle as he shouldered open a door and barged into a little sitting room.

"Plagg," he said.

"I just had to be near your disgusting feet and you promised me those little cheese balls-" Plagg started but Adrien ignored him. Plagg sighed heavily before the transformation began.

Chat Noir took the long way around, dropping down into the ballroom from a second floor balcony to find that the fight had fallen silent. He snapped his head around. It wasn't over. She hadn't fixed anything yet. There were still over turned tables and a few members of the crowd who had been caught before they had reached the foyer were still holding their poses. The quiet was eerie. He headed for the entrance and it was quiet there too.

What had happened?

Where was she?

He heard a yell from outside and vaulted the broken glass to exit through the window. On the lawn, the party goers had scattered into the gardens and towards the car park but a pack stood posed together. They'd been caught before they could make it too far. Adrien recognized Orla among them though most were strangers. He ran past them to find an Italian garden full of statuary. Mixed into the replica Davids and Greek Gods were party guests who had chosen the wrong place to hide.

"Missed me, pretty boy," he heard Ladybug's voice and his heart rate slowed. If she was fine, then everything was fine.

He scampered up onto a nearby statue of Poseidon and balanced on the head to see where exactly the fight was happening. The flash of lightning told him where to go and he dropped to the ground and ran. She had led the Akuma away from most of the people that that also limited her options. The yo-yo couldn't swing her away when she had nothing higher than a six foot statue of some dead noble to attach it to.

He came up behind the Akuma and swept his feet out from under him. Before he could grab hold of the pendant, he had to lurch back from another bolt of that lightning. He skipped backwards as the pink fashion disaster climbed it it's feet.

"You got here fast," Ladybug said as he fell into step beside her.

"I can hear at a catastrophe from a mile away," he said.

She shook her head at the pun and said, "Go left."

He didn't go left. What she said and what she meant were not the same thing. It was a short hand they'd developed as they had been working out all the time apart. Multiple attacks a week meant lots of time to practice. The code was his favourite part. It meant they could talk strategy in front of a grandstanding Akuma without giving anything away. Left didn't mean left, regroup didn't mean regroup, applesauce was never something an Akuma wanted to hear.

He charged at Liam with his baton spinning and then feinted right. The Akuma turned to follow him and Ladybug caught him around the ankles with the yo-yo. It should have been the end of the fight. He went down hard and all she needed to do was pull him in and grab the pendant.

If they moved fast enough, it would have been fine. But Liam sat up. She dragged him in but he was warming up another bolt of that lightning. He could see it and he wasn't sure if Ladybug could. There were better strategic choices but Chat went with the quickest possible solution.

It was an easy decision.

She couldn't get hit.

She might have been fast enough to dodge it but it wasn't a risk he could take. He used the baton as a lever and and flung himself onto the Akuma's lap. Ladybug now had two people to pull over grass and cobblestones and it slowed her down. She was yelling his name but he already had a hold of the pendant.

The shock of the lightning hit him in the side and the last thought he had was to clench his hand tight but then everything went black.

 **Author Notes:**

Ha! Got in some Ladrien moments!

I am back from my long mid-term related hiatus with a long chapter!


	19. The Garden

He woke up dizzy lying on his back. He blinked up at the night sky for a moment and couldn't quite remember why he had fallen asleep outside. There were stars. Not too many. It was too bright this close to the city for a real spread of stars but enough to be pretty. What had happened came back in fragments, the pink lightning and the press of the crowd and Ladybug yelling his name.

He sat up and blinked at the garden. Nothing hurt which probably meant she had already put everything back together. No shards of marble, no distant screaming.

"You idiot," she said and he tilted his head back to grin at her. He was sitting on the ground with his feet stretched out in front of him like a little kid.

"It worked, didn't it?" he said.

"He threw you, I heard you hit the statue, it broke into bits but couldn't see you. I thought you were hurt," she said. She was standing over him with her hands on her hips and her lips a tight line.

"I probably was hurt. Did I at least strike a good pose or was it something cliche and terrible? If I have to be possessed by an Akuma, I'd like to at least be purrty," he said holding out a hand so she could help him up.

"Idiot," she said.

She took his hand and pulled him up. In the same movement, she wrapped her arms around him. He tensed and jumped but she didn't let go so he tightened his arms around her and held on. He kissed her hair and her temple and her forehead. It was as much to remind himself that he already knew what he wanted as it was to try and comfort her.

"Stupid cat," she said but now her voice was muffled against his chest.

"I am that," he said, "I also need to go back. I'll text you when I get home. You can come over and tell me how dumb I am for hours if you want."

"Shut up," she said.

He held onto her a little bit longer. Liam was lying in the grass on the other side of the statue. There were literally hundreds of other people running around the grounds. He was worried about Marinette. He needed to find his father before a search party was sent out.

But all those things could wait. He held onto Ladybug and let her tell him how he was stupid and reckless while she pressed against him.

"Can I trust you not to throw yourself in front of a bus in a heroic gesture before you get home?" she asked.

"You're the only person I'd jump in front of a bus for, so don't lie in the middle of the road and I won't have to stop any vehicles to save you," he said.

"You did not need to take a lightning strike to the chest to save me either," she said taking a half step back and glaring at him.

"Some risks are worth taking, you can do things I can't. One of us was going to get hit at that range. He was too close and he was going to get that shot off. It was better that it hit me. And I am fine. Stop looking at me like that," he said leaning in until his nose touched hers.

She reached up and put her finger in on his nose. She glared a little harder and he pursed his lips at her. She pushed him back out of her space. He was laughing the entire time.

"You're the one who's always calling me My Lady, escort me back to my castle then," she said.

"This is your castle? Impawsive. Here I thought it belonged to some historical society," he said.

He took her arm and walked with her back through the gardens. The people in their fancy gowns and now rumbled tuxedos were all headed back toward the building as well. Chat kept an eye out for his father or for Marinette or even for Gorilla. There was going to be video and pictures up on the internet of the two of them walking together. The idea of that made him smile.

"Until the next time, My Lady," he said with a bow when they reached the path that led around the building.

She put a finger on his chin to tilt his face down and kissed him. Soft and fast. Then she was gone, swinging away toward the rooftops. He just stared after her for too long. There were people everywhere here. He flashed them all a huge grin and then snapped open the baton to get him back to the second floor balcony so he could disappear back into the Chateau and come out the other side as Adrien.

People were talking about Ladybug and Chat Noir as he came down the stairs. He tuned the conversations out and stopped on the steps to look for someone he recognized. Marinette was standing near the door with Gorilla of all people. She was wrapped in a suit jacket and staring out at the crowd with the same kind of attention that he was.

Looking. Looking for him. She was looking for him.

"Adrien," she said when she saw him.

He couldn't hear it but he saw her mouth move and her shoulders relax. She had been worried about him. For some reason he was surprised but then, Marinette was the type of person who probably worried about the old bat Wilhelmina. On top of that, he was the only person here that she knew here.

He waved and hurried over. She was wrapped in his jacket and immediately tried to give it back.

"Keep it," he said grabbing the lapels and pulling it closer around her.

He was buzzing with energy. She didn't stray too far as he had the same conversation he had had with his father since he was twelve. The one in which he explained that no, it wasn't Gorilla's fault that he had gotten lost in the fight. He apologized to Gorilla himself and took a moment to check on Liam. Once he was sure that he had made it through all his social obligations - and the driveway had cleared enough to fit another car into it - he took Marinette home.

People who lived in central Paris went right back to what they were doing after an Akuma attack. They reacted about as much as people reacted to a fire drill. Fashion moguls and the very rich apparently all needed to leave immediately in case it happened again. It was funny to watch them. There was literal pearl clutching going on not too far from where they stood waiting for the line of cars to move and let theirs in.

Marinette was quiet once they got into the limo. She sat with the jacket curled around her like a blanket as she stared out the window at the country side. Adrien was sending text messages to Ladybug that got no response and failing to make conversation with Marinette at all. He sat beside her and she gave him one word answers.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"It scares me how easily someone could get hurt," she said.

"We're fine, everyone's fine," he said.

"You find it all exciting?" she asked.

He hadn't been watching his tone. He sounded happy. People had been frozen and terrorized and he was on the brink of giggles. He was excited but not about the fight. Ladybug had kissed him in front of fifty people and that was what was causing all his buzzing energy. Other people knew. It wasn't the same as inviting her home for Christmas dinner but he loved that it wasn't a secret. He wanted to go find a journalist and have it all printed up on the front page of the morning papers.

"No," he said to Marinette.

"I know everyone is fine, but maybe next time…" she trailed off.

"We've got superheroes, we'll be fine," he said and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She tensed and then slumped over to lean against him. He held her but she didn't say anything else the rest of the way back into the city.


	20. The Purr

Chat leaned against the wall, watching her work, letting himself stare. She purified and freed each Akuma, one at a time. It was painstaking work and there was a limit to how much she could do in a day. She seemed intent on crossing that line today.

She was already tired. The fight at the Gala had to have taken up a lot of her energy but she'd told him she would feel better if she cleansed a few of the Akuma. She had shown up at his window angry. She didn't seem to be angry with him. It was a less directed kind of frustration. Between opening jars, she would throw out theories about Hawkmoth.

His buzzing thrill from the party and the kiss was gone. He was worried about her. She was throwing all her frustration at the Akuma collection and finally her miracle stone beeped at her. It sounded even more like a warning than it usually did.

"They'll still be here tomorrow," he said.

"I can do one more today," she said.

"No, no, rest for a minute. A little catnap maybe," he said.

He reached up and took her hand, stilling her so she couldn't reach for another jar without pulling away from him. She surprised him by sitting down beside him. She folded her knees up under her and took a long shaky breath in. She sat with her head down and her eyes shut and didn't look like his Ladybug at all. She looked small and tired and overwhelmed. The white akuma, little butterflies and nothing else, still fluttered around the room. They hadn't let them out yet. She didn't seem to notice them.

He tugged on her hand, trying to pull her attention back to him. Instead, she kept her head down and folded into him. Her head landed on his shoulder and she leaned against him like he was the only thing keeping her from falling apart entirely. Their hands were still together and he wasn't sure who started it but their fingers were laced. He wrapped his other arm around her and held her close.

"Do you want to stay here tonight?" he asked.

She nodded and said nothing. He'd meant it half as a joke. The last time he'd invited her back to his place, she had kicked him off a roof. He didn't know what to say to her like this.

"Do you need anything?" he asked.

"Just tired," she said.

"Not because of this," he said waving at the butterflies.

She stayed close to him.

"Talk to me, Bug," he said to the top of her head.

"Have you ever wanted something and then when you get it it's just awful?" she asked.

Another beep. Three more before she wasn't Ladybug anymore. She wasn't moving.

"I have been working for this job for years. Years. I did all the extra projects. I wrote all the letters and did all the volunteer work. I did everything right and it paid off. I got into the program which isn't easy on its own. I got the job I wanted," she said.

"And you don't like it?" he asked.

"Everyone is terrible. Every success is at someone else's expense, someone else's failure is an 'opportunity' and I don't know how anyone lives like this. I had made friends when I first got there but they're all gone. The nice ones quit and the others hate you if you succeed or try to set you up so you fail. And every time I turn around there is another Akuma. Another perfectly nice person that's been twisted into a monster over something stupid and petty like ruined shoes or being kicked out of the museum. People are going to get hurt. You could have gotten hurt tonight. I can't fix any of it. Nothing," she said.

Another beep. Two left.

"You fix it every day. You give those people back their lives, you make sure they don't hurt the people they love. You're wonderful. Truly wonderful. You probably make all those people at your job better just by sitting near them at the lunch table," he said which got him a weak little laugh but not an answer. She was silent and close.

"Did you mean it, that I could stay?" she asked.

"Any time, I'll give you the whole bedroom if you want it," he said.

He pulled her up and pushed her into his room. She came and went by the fire escape rather than the front door and he'd almost gotten over the weird fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach that came with seeing her sitting at his window or leaning against his bed frame while she talked. Almost. He pointed at the bathroom and she disappeared into it before the transformation wore off. Having her in his room, as herself was even worse on his nerves than having her as Ladybug.

She was a mystery. That girl on the other side of the door, with her stressful job and her dead father. He could probably find out her name. He could sit down and go through news reports until he found all the names of all the families who had lost someone that day. He didn't even need to do that much, he could just open the door.

He didn't do either no matter how much the curiosity gnawed at him.

She had offered that information once and he could wait until she was ready to offer it again. He didn't need to take it from her. Some day she would trust him that much again. He wanted that more than he wanted the name.

He wanted her to tell him more than he wanted to know.

He stopped by the dresser and pulled out a pair of flannel pajama pants that would be comically long on her but it seemed like something that you might offer a friend at a sleepover. The first t-shirt he pulled out was a soccer jersey with his name across the back and he stuffed that back in and picked a plain blue one she could wear. He left it all on the bed and retreated to the living room. Still Chat Noir. He was not thinking straight enough to decide whether or not to change back so he just stayed.

"These do not fit you," her voice came from the other side of the door, "These are as long as I am tall. You're tall but you aren't that tall."

"Maybe I'm taller when I'm not transformed," he said.

"I wish that one worked for me. If you were tall enough for these to fit, you'd have to be 8 feet, you wouldn't fit through doorways," she said.

"Professional basketball player, that's me," he said.

"That explains the fancy apartment, you make millions every game, right?" she said. She laughed and he pictured her with the pajamas pooling around her ankles. She was probably adorable. They probably hung low on her hips so she had to hike them up. He pushed the thought away but it kept teasing at his attention.

"Yup," he said.

She was quiet for a little while and he thought maybe she'd gone to bed. He'd got her a pair of pajamas to wear but he hadn't gotten anything for himself. Jeans and the sofa for him, then.

"Chat?" her voice was softer, less sure, less confident. He crept toward the door. Plain, not quite white, a gold doorknob, the same as it always was except she was on the other side of it.

"Yes, my Lady," he said.

"It's your bed, I feel rude making you sleep on the couch," she said.

"Tonight, it's yours," he said.

"Or we could share?" The words came out slow and uneasy and he was pretty sure he'd misunderstood her but she was rushing on, "Like the sleeping sand day, just us, just together, it doesn't have to be anything else."

"Anything you want," he said as his heart pounded and tried to climb up his throat and strangle him.

"I don't want to be alone," she said.

He hesitated in front of the door with his fingers flexing but not reaching for the handle and his blood rushing in his ears. He was panicking. He couldn't remember the last time he'd properly panicked. He wasn't sure he'd ever panicked as Chat Noir. Superheroes weren't allowed to panic but apparently whatever artificial bravery came with the transformation did not extend to his hyperactive emotions.

"But it's up to you, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable," she said.

"You're not," he said which was a lie but it was a lie he hoped that he could make true if he just believed in it hard enough. He was uncomfortable but that didn't have to be something bad.

He leaned on the door and opened it very slowly. She was already tucked in under the blankets, with her back to him. The curtains were drawn so the only light in the room came from the doorway. The lights were on in half the apartment. There were six white butterflies flitting around. He hadn't brushed his teeth or fed the fish or finished his homework. He ignored all of that and pushed the door shut behind him so he was back in the dark with her again.

"Can I try something?" he asked.

"Sure," she said and the forced casualness did more to calm him down than anything else might have. She was better at hiding it but she wasn't really any more relaxed. This was just as strange and new for her as it was for him. She still had her back to him. As Chat Noir, he could see pretty well in the dark but she didn't turn back over.

"I purr," he said.

"You say that the way someone else might say, 'I am sexually attracted to moose.' I can almost see you flinching in the dark," she said.

He had gotten himself all worked up and the tension shattered like plate glass. He started to laugh, "Moose are very sexy, I don't understand why that's so unusual," he said. He flopped down onto the side of the bed where she wasn't and laughed until he wasn't so panicked. The girl he had been in love with for years was in his bed and she was making jokes about moose.

"Moose are not sexy. Caribou, yes. Moose? No," she said. He laughed again and when he had fallen quiet, she said, "Tell me why you're all weird about purring. It's a cat thing. That's not the weirdest cat thing to inherit."

"It's an involuntary thing. Real cats can control when they purr. I just do it but only if I can calm down completely. I'm not good at that," he said.

"I can't sit still as Ladybug at all. I have all this extra energy," she said.

"Yes, exactly that," he said. His foot was tapping as though trying to prove the point and he forced it still, "But the purring thing, when I can make it happen? Is fantastic. I've only ever done it three times and the first time it surprised me so much I stopped. It's inpurriating."

"That one was bad, and the word already has fur in it, too forced," she said groping in the dark until she found his shoulder and gave him a shove. He was still lying on his back, looking up at the light fixture, trying to believe this was normal.

"I will not have you critiquing my puns. Each one is a meow-sterpiece," he said.

"Each one is worst than the last," she said.

"Not true," he said.

He couldn't make the words come to ask her if he could touch her but she didn't wait for him to. She just flicked the blankets back and once he'd tentatively climbed in under them, she rolled over and put her head on his shoulder.

"I thought you were supposed to be relaxing," she said putting a hand on his chest. He could barely feel the touch through the suit but that didn't seem to matter. Her hand was a weight and he couldn't breathe with it there.

"Working on it," he said wrapping an arm around her. He lay on his back and she cuddled in closer but he couldn't release the tension in his muscles. Even his hand on her back was tense.

"Try this," she said and she rolled back onto her side and grabbed his arm to pull him along. He was stronger than she was like this but it didn't even occur to him to do anything but exactly what she wanted. She lay back and pulled him in so he was the one with his head on her shoulder. She paused to trace the shape of his claws with her fingers and then pulled his arm across her stomach. She kept her fingers looped lightly around his wrist.

"Then you have to breathe, I don't think passing out was what you had in mind," she said and her voice was right there just above his head. He took a deep breath and it smelled like her. Something fruity, his laundry detergent and a smell that he wouldn't have been able to pick out if he was just Adrien but his cat senses would recognize her by smell alone. He focused on that, on letting some instinct that wasn't quite human break down the little details of her scent.

"Better, good kitty," she said and he mock hissed at her but didn't move.

He would be perfectly happy to never move again.

She touched his ear, the cat ear, and he twitched it. She giggled very softly. He nuzzled into her shoulder as she pushed his hair away from his face. He had gone from panicked to melting in what felt like an instant. Her fingers in his hair were gentle and she rubbed behind his ears. He assumed she meant it as a joke but it was so good that he leaned back into it.

"Don't stop," he said when her hand moved on. She rubbed slow circles between his shoulder blades and he murmured, "That's good too."

He was bigger than a house cat and when the purr started it was loud. It rumbled through his chest. She laughed in surprise but didn't stop touching him. He tightened his hold to cradle her in as close as he could without hurting her. His body relaxed as the vibrations built.

This was what the purr something special. It vibrated through his body and he relaxed. His heart rate slowed. His breathing evened and deepened. It wiped away tension he wasn't aware he was holding in his back and shoulders. It pushed out any rushing thoughts until he was thinking as slowly as he was moving.

He was half asleep and more content than he could remember being since he was a child. He held onto his Ladybug and breathed in her scent as he melted.

"Good night, Chat," she whispered with her lips against his forehead.

He returned the kiss to the nearest bit of skin he could reach. Her shoulder might have been forgivable but he'd hit her collarbone where the too big shirt she had borrowed from him had slipped to the side. He was too lost in the purr to be embarrassed but he pull back and pressed his face back against her shoulder which was safely covered in clothing.

She rubbed her hand along his jaw and he tilted his head back to allow her to touch his face or his throat or whatever it was that she wanted. His eyes were shut and he was going to lose the transformation to sleep before it wore off. He was still purring and he could feel the way the vibrations were working as much on her as they were on him. Her shoulders were more relaxed, her breathing slowing until it matched his, even the way her hands moved was slow.

She held his chin in one hand and kissed him again. He returned it. Slow and hazy. Her mouth sweet and soft and just a little higher than him so he had to tilt his head back to reach her. Even this was hazy. It didn't wake either of them up. She had a little smile on her lips as she pressed lazy kisses along his jaw to his ear and then back. He lost the transformation while their mouths were still together.

"Hi," he murmured once the blinding flash was gone.

"Hi," she said and she kissed him again.

He fell asleep as Adrien, tucked in against his mystery girl with the taste of her in his mouth and the heavy soft relaxation of the purr still soaked into every muscle in his body.

 **Author Notes:**

Bet you thought after last chapter that I had finally cooled it on the rambling authors notes but NOPE.

You know that line in the Princess Diaries movie where the stylist makes the moose joke? "A very sexy moose, makes the boy moose go HOOOONK"? Yeah that's what I was thinking of when I wrote that sexy moose line. Maybe I am the only one who thought that was the funniest joke in all of history but 12 year old me thought that was one of the funniest jokes of all time and I have never forgotten it. I can still picture Anne Hathaway's face and the way he said HOOOONK.

This is my favourite chapter so far. The purring and the cuddling and the sleepy kisses and his little freak out about being in bed with a girl. These are the kind of things that I write fic for.


	21. The Sick Day

**Author Notes** at the beginning this time:

Have you ever wished that your fanfic came in a choose your own adventure style? You are in luck! There are two versions of Chapter 21.

If you like things rated no higher than Teen where there is cuddling and kissing and bad jokes about vikings: scroll down, keep reading.

Otherwise you're going to have to head on over to AO3 and this stupid upload system won't let me link you but my username is the same over there and the story is called: Sick Day and Other Alternate Scenes from Sealed Away which is actually obnoxiously long now that I am looking at it but I'm leaving it for the time being.

Your choice.

Both Chapter 21s lead seamlessly into Chapter 22. It does not change the plot or the course that this ship is on. You don't miss any of the "important dialogue" all you miss is the porn. So choose what you're comfortable with.

* * *

Chapter 21: Sick Day

Adrien's alarm buzzed at him. His phone was still in his pocket and he groped for it in the dark. It wasn't an alarm. It was a phone call. He hadn't set any alarms. He groped for the phone and Ladybug shifted under him, he had fallen asleep half on top of her and hadn't moved. His arm was asleep and he was too comfortable to want her to get off of it. He could get used to not having an arm.

He answered the phone without looking at the screen.

"Hello?" he said.

"Is everything all right? You're late for the lighting tests. You're never late," Adrien grimaced but didn't groan or swear at the phone. He'd forgotten that he had volunteered for the lighting tests. They fit into his schedule before classes and all he had to do was stand on the runway stage while someone shone lights at him and other people debated whether the lights were sufficiently blue or fuschia or soft or harsh or whatever adjective they needed to be.

"Be sick," Ladybug whispered before he could answer. She was twirling the hair at the back of his neck between her fingers and it was making him shiver.

"I'm not going to be able to make it, Milo," he said, "I think I've come down with something. I'm so sorry I didn't call earlier. The cold meds must have knocked me right out.."

"Ah, well. We'll throw an intern up there for today but when we do the dress rehearsals, you owe me and nothing but Bo-Bo the Floating Death Clown will stop you from showing up," Milo said.

"Bo-Bo the Death Clown?" Adrien frowned at the faint glow on the other side of the curtains and tried to make that sentence sensible. He couldn't. Ladybug's fingers were still in his hair and he was only half listening to Milo.

"Yes or Frou-Frou the Building Eating Chihuahua. What I mean is nothing short of needing rescued by Ladybug herself will be an acceptable excuse for missing next week," Milo said.

"Right, Frou-Frou, Ladybug, Bo-Bo, got it," Adrien said.

"Feel better darling, get some rest, ciao-ciao-ciao," Milo said and the phone clicked off.

"Was that conversation as ridiculous as it sounded?" Ladybug asked.

He murmured something that was meant to be yes but came out as just a happy sigh. Her fingers were still trailing through his hair and they had dipped down below the collar of his shirt so when she rubbed his back, she was touching bare skin. He was going crazy, slowly but surely, crazy. It was a very good place to be.

"Let me up," she said after an elastic bit of time that might have been hours or just minutes.

"No," he said.

"I need to call in sick or they're going to be calling me too and there might be yelling. It's not a good week to be calling out," she said.

"Do you need to go in?" he asked trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice and failing.

"Yes but I'm going to stay here instead," she said.

"Good," he said cuddling in closer and pushing her back against the mattress.

"You still need to let me up, lazy fur ball," she said.

He groaned and rolled off of her. She didn't get off her side of the bed, she slid over him and then out of the blankets. He listened as she padded across the room to where her things were piled up on top of his dresser. It was dark. The curtains kept the room as dark as night but with the sun up, there was enough light to pick out details and shadows in the room. She was just shapes. She stumbled on the pajama pants and had to hike them up. Her hair was loose and hanging down her back but those were about the only details he could see.

She was rummaging through her bag for her phone.

All the way across the room.

She was too far away.

He got up so he could come and hug her from behind. She leaned back into his chest and he set his chin on the top of her head. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and breathed in the smell of her. It didn't matter that his human nose couldn't pick out as many details from her as his cat one could. She still smelled nice.

"Too tall, fur ball," she said.

"Too small, Bug," he said.

She called in and left a message on an answering machine. An employee number, an apology but no excuse or even a lie about being sick, and a promise to catch up on everything she was going to miss when she was back in tomorrow.

He started backing up towards the bed and she walked with him. He sat down and she turned in his arms so that she sat on his lap. He couldn't see her but this close he didn't need to.

"I read somewhere that if you sleep beside someone, your brain releases bonding chemicals and it makes you trust them," he said.

"You're a massive dork," she said.

"What?" he said.

"I am wearing your clothes, sitting on your lap, I just called out from my very competitive hostile work environment to spend the day with you and you're talking about brain chemistry," she said laughing and leaning her forehead against his shoulder. He could feel her hair against his cheek. She had such nice hair. He ran his fingers through it as she laughed at him.

"What would you like to talk about instead?" he asked.

"I don't really want to talk, I want to kiss you, maybe have some breakfast and then I want you to do that purring thing again," she said.

"It's good isn't it?" he said.

"Fantastic. I'd do it today, everyday, any day, I could be an addict by the end of the week," she said.

"I could get used to that, I could sleep like that every day for the rest of my life," he said.

His hands wandered down her back to waist and she took it as an invitation to slide closer. Her knees on either side of his legs had been one thing but now her body was against his and the feel of her thighs spread so wide was distracting him. From everything. The walls could have been falling down and he wouldn't have noticed because of the way she was straddling his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and held on.

She cuddled in and shifted just enough to make it impossible for him to forget where her body was. Her head was on his shoulder, her arms around his back, and she pressed into him rather than leaned. He rubbed his face against hers and she laughed and twitched away.

"You're such a cat, and you need to shave," she said.

"Oh sorry," he said pulling back.

"No, come back," she said catching his face with her hand. She ran her palm along his jaw and he could feel what she meant about shaving now that he was paying attention. Her thumb along his jaw and then down this throat was enough to make him want to purr again. Her hand dragged against the stubble and that made him shiver too.

"You'd look hilarious if you grew it out," she said, "Chat Noir with a viking beard."

"I would not be able to pull off a viking beard. Not as Chat Noir or at my day job," he said.

"I didn't say that you would look good, I said that it would be hilarious," she said still tracing his throat with her finger tips.

"It would be that," he said and his voice came out all soft and halfway to being a sigh. He pulled her in a little tighter and kissed her. He hit her jaw but that was it's own kind of electric. He kissed down her neck and she tilted her head back for him. He went slow, a kiss, wait with his mouth against skin, another, this one a little lower, wait again. She didn't stop him. She murmured encouragement and played with his hair and kept the rest of her body pressed flush to his.

"I want you forever," he said.

"We're going to figure this out, we're going to have forever. It just may not start today," she said.

"It started years ago, you've been my forever since almost the moment I met you," he said.

"The first time I met you, I thought you were another Akuma," she said.

"I know, but I won you over eventually," he said. "I went out there that day, to find you. I had transformed once, I could barely use my powers, Plagg and I still argued over everything but there was danger and I knew you'd be in the middle of it, trying to save lives. That was where I wanted to be. I wanted to be where you were. I wanted to be half the person you were."

"You're twice the person I am," she said.

"Not true," he said.

"It is but it doesn't matter because we're better together," she said.

"Always," he said.

She kissed him and his hands came up to catch her face and hold on as he kissed her back. Gentle for only a moment before she was kissing him hard, pulling him in and teasing at his lower lip until he opened his mouth for her. He was lost, he was hers and he had never been happier. He leaned back and she came with him, lying on top of him and not breaking the kiss.

They lay curled in the dark and every kiss made him smile.

"You really are perfect," he said.

"I am entirely not," she said.

"Ok, but you're my favourite and I like you best," he said, "Not perfect but better than anyone else."

"You're such a dork," she told him again.

"But I'm your dork and that makes me special," he said.

"It does," she pulled him in to kiss. He still had a hand on her thigh and he pulled it up with him as he leaned in to reach her. She kissed him hard and in the middle of it stopped to say, "And thank you for not saying purrfect."

"Damn it," he said shaking his head and propping himself up on his elbows, "I missed that. I blame you, you're distracting me and it's killing the quality of my puns, My Lady."

She couldn't see him in the dark but he wiggled his eyebrows at her and cracked a grin. His nerves were gone. Just gone. For the first time, possibly ever, she felt like a sure thing. She wasn't swinging away or racing against the miracle stone's clock. She was there and she was safe and happy and his. He was struck by a wave of possessiveness that threw him off. He lost his other desires in a wave of his heart beating out the same word over and over. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. He shook it off.

"I am a good influence is what you mean," she said.

"Yes, good," he told her.

"If asked you to stop making puns, would you?" she asked.

"Yeah, but only for today, once we're fully dressed again, all bets are off," he said, "Is that what you want?"

"Whatever," she said with a wave of her hand.

"You like them," he said with a laugh.

"I do not like them, I tolerate them because I like you," she said.

"Close enough," he said, "Damn, claws enough. You really are throwing me off."

She laughed and pulled him back down to kiss again.


	22. The Message

Adrien woke up again to a tinny alarm. It was some sort of prerecorded cell phone noise. One of those not-quite-music sounds. It was grating. Beside him, someone swore and the last day fell back into place for him. He groped around until he found her and pulled her back against his chest.

"No," she said.

"Yes," he kissed the back of her neck.

"You don't have one?" she asked.

"Don't have a what?" he asked.

"An Akuma alarm," she said.

She was pulling away from him and this time he let her go. He did in fact have an Akuma alert. He had apps that picked through social media and news reports to spit out potential problems. It was one his phone. He didn't know where his phone was. At one point it had been in his pocket but now he didn't have a guess.

He saw hers light up from across the room as she pulled the phone out of her bag and thumbed through it. Her hair was in the way and he couldn't see her face but she was standing there, leaning a hip against his dresser as though she had never been more comfortable anywhere.

"Get up," she said.

"Ugh," he said.

"An eloquent argument, but you still need to get up," she said with looking at him.

As she spoke she was pulling her clothing straight and gathering her stuff. He didn't bother trying to find his phone or anything else. He dragged himself up out of the bed. She'd shut off her phone again and that had been their only illumination. He followed her by sound and caught her hand mostly by luck as she headed for the door. He pulled her in and she leaned her shoulder against his chest. It was almost good enough to calm his need for having her close.

"I am going to turn on the lights," he said.

"No," she said.

"No?" he said.

"Hey," her voice was softer. He must have let too much of his emotion into his voice on that one word because she turned into him and caught his face in one hand. He leaned into her touch, "Not because I don't want to. I do. I need to know as much as you do but there is some sort of blue monster climbing up the side of the Lourve and we need to deal with that first. I want time. I want to ask all the questions and I can't while there's something out there hurting people."

"Akuma first," he said.

"Then we can have all the getting to know you conversations," she said.

"Fine but this Akuma owes me another sick day that I actually get to spend in bed with you. Go figure out where the Kwamis are hiding. I need pants or detransforming after the fight is going to be awkward for the entire city," he said.

She laughed and pushed him away gently before she slipped out of the room.

He met her on the fire escape as Chat Noir and she paused to kiss him before climbing for the roof. It almost made up for his disappointment. He had never really given his imagination full reign over what having her be his was would be like. The way she kissed him like it was a reflex was in the running for his favourite part.

She led the way across the rooftops and he kept close on her heels. The creature hanging off the brick work and methodically breaking all the windows of the museum was bigger than human should have been and periwinkle blue. It had claws and a tail but luckily no wings. It was always easier when they couldn't fly.

"It's actually big and blue," he said.

"This is the second in two days. You'd think he'd need more time to recharge," she said.

"We're just lucky," Chat said.

As far as Akuma battles went, this one was pretty easy. The only not blue and scaly part of the Akuma was a watch which made finding the butterfly easy enough. Ladybug's Lucky Charm and brought her something he didn't see but it unbalanced the Akuma enough that it lost its grip on the side of the building. Once it was laying on its back, Chat could crack the watch face and release the little butterfly.

"I'm going to go home and grab a change of clothes," she said as they stood together watching the butterfly spiral up into the blue sky. She stood with her shoulder against his. Every time she touched him, he cracked a smile.

"I can lend you something," he said.

"Nothing I can wear to work and I can't afford to skip work twice in a row. Tell me your actual apartment number and I will come to your door like a regular person," she said.

He had pouted and she had laughed at him. Letting her go meant going back to his real life and in his real life he had a pile of homework on the mathematical comparisons between different types of load bearing columns. As much as he enjoyed his classes, he wanted her there with him more than he wanted anything else.

"413 but you should just come home," he said.

"You're supposed to say something romantic about me spending the night. I'll see you soon," she said. She kissed him again before her beeping miracle stone made her turn and scamper away before someone caught a picture of Chat Noir kissing some girl on the street.

Adrien went home without her and tried to put his life into some kind of order. He shooed all the white butterflies they hadn't dealt with the night before out a window. He put his shirt back on right side out while Plagg mocked him for getting dressed in the dark.

"Worth it," he said.

He found his phone where it had slipped down behind the bed. It was overflowing with messages. People asking about the Gala mostly. He sent off a few responses to the people who seemed most worried about him being dead and dismissed everything else until he found one from Alya. He'd scrolled through her blog post on the event without reading it. She hadn't been there to get pictures of her own but there were a few links to videos people had put up on youtube or vine. He hadn't watched those either.

The text message wasn't about the Gala or Ladybug or gossip. It read: "Is Marinette still with you?"

"Marinette isn't with me. Did you find her?" he sent back.

The last he had seen Marinette, she had waved to him from the front door of her dormitory before disappearing inside. As far as he knew she was fine. If she was in contact with anyone, it would have been Alya and worry curled in his stomach. Alya never left a text unopened and her response came back immediately.

"She finally picked up. You both need to read your messages more than once a week. Honestly," she sent.

He kept the phone on him but didn't answer most of the messages coming in as he attempted to get his problems done for class. He kept glancing at the screen as he wrote out streams of numbers and sketched out diagrams. He had talked himself out of worrying for most of the afternoon.

He was over eager to see her, that was all it was. It worked until afternoon faded into evening. His worry was worry now.

"Bug, do you want to me to order something for dinner?" he sent her.

It seemed casual enough, not anxious or clingy. He cringed at being that guy. The guy who had to meticulously plan out his messages in case he sent the wrong implication. Nino had been like that at the start of his relationship with Alya. He had worried over every word and what it might mean if you read it on a Tuesday while watching the sunset as opposed to a Friday during breakfast. Adrien had every intention of never being that guy but here he was, worrying about coming across as clingy or demanding.

He pushed the phone away and dropped his head onto the desk and groaned as his own stupidity.

Nothing came back. He waited but the phone didn't buzz. He flipped it over but the screen was the same. Message delivered. That was all. He frowned and started to write out another message. Deleted it. Did it again. Deleted that too. He got up and walked around the room before going back to the phone again.

Still nothing.

"It's fine if you can't come tonight, but tell me that you're ok," he sent.

That sounded worried but he was worried. She wasn't as immediate with texting back as Alya was but usually if she was there, he got a response right away. He was expecting her to be there. She had said she was coming back. He watched the screen and tried to talk himself into a course of action that was more reasonable than sitting and staring and worrying.

The phone finally chimed. He snapped it up prepared to laugh at himself and his over reaction.

"Don't worry. Go left."

That was it. Nothing else. He sent other messages but they went unanswered. He phoned her but it disconnected without an answer. She didn't have a voice mail for him to leave a message on.

"Plagg," he said.

"I am so disappointed that you won't be getting laid tonight," Plagg drawled from somewhere in the apartment.

"Look at this," he held out the phone as Plagg drifted up over the back of the sofa.

"Maybe she sent directions to the wrong apartment," he said.

"That's all she sent me," he said.

"So don't go left then," Plagg said but he didn't sound as sarcastic as he usually did. Plagg sat with him the rest of the evening. Not offering any useful suggestions but just being there. Plagg's nonchalance set Adrien's nerves jangling even if he wouldn't admit to being worried. Plagg just sat there and pretended not to be concerned at all.

Adrien kept calling but got nothing back. He finally went to bed in a room that had never felt so empty before and looked at the ceiling instead of sleeping.

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

We aren't to the happily ever after folks.

Not yet anyways. (I am a sucker and I always write a happily ever after but first we must all suffer).

To those who wanted this chapter to be a reveal or more cuddling on steroids: Whoops. Nope.

To those who have been plotting out ways to make this story worse since like chapter 2: join me in the evil laughter.

And a special shout out to me left-field reviewers:

To my anon reviewer who hates kissing, dude, are you still reading? How are you? Does your capslock button still work? How're the kids? To Aaron, where do you get your statistics? I am super curious because based on those numbers Chat Noir can run at 5 times highway speeds.


	23. The Left Hand Turn

Adrien kept his phone on him at school, at work, when he was just walking around his apartment or going to the grocery store. He usually had his phone with him but it didn't usually feel so heavy or important. He didn't usually check it so often. Nothing he sent her even seemed to go through, he might as well have been sending messages into the void. It meant he was waiting on her to reach out and that was playing havoc on his nerves.

"Go left," usually meant to meet an enemy head on but it also meant they were splitting up to come at an Akuma from two sides. She swung out to the side and he took the middle but that meant there was a target. He didn't know what the target was. There was no enemy that he was aware of, he'd gone through every news post from the day she'd disappeared and there was no other attack. There wasn't even anything unusual that might have meant one of the less aggressive Akuma was playing tricks.

If he knew what the problem was, he could help. As it was, he could do nothing but stare at his phone and try not to let his mood spill over onto the people he had to talk to. He had been dodging calls from his father in particular until he wasn't so upset.

"Scared," a little voice in the back of his head whispered but he pushed it down. It didn't stop murmuring: "You're scared."

It was two days before he heard from her.

She sent him a text message that came through some sort of website, it didn't have a return number and the first line was an advertisement. He opened it only because he was compulsively opening everything that came up as a notification. It looked like spam and he would have closed it without reading the entire thing but the first line was:

"Go left," and it was followed by an address, a time, and the word, "Rooftop."

Something tense and terrified in his chest loosened. He walked off of campus without returning for the second half of the damned calculus course. He should have stayed. He had the conversation with himself as he walked away that he should have stayed, could have stayed but he knew that his ability to focus was a lost cause. He had hours to go before he got to the meeting time. He stopped off at a fromagerie to buy Plagg some of the high quality Camembert as an apology for all the pacing he was going to do for the rest of the afternoon.

It was nine o'clock when he headed out as Chat Noir. Plagg had whined about it but he'd also eaten half the round of cheese so Adrien hadn't even bothered to argue with him. He ran a little just to burn off the worst of his anxiety before he came up to the building. Just an apartment block with a shop on the ground floor. It wasn't so dissimilar from the apartment block where he lived.

As he looked at it, paranoia set in.

Ladybug had sent the message. He was sure it was her. He had no reason to be sure. He stopped and let himself think it all the way through. Maybe it hadn't been her. Why hadn't she sent it from her phone? And if she hadn't sent it, then what had happened to her that someone else had been able to figure out that code. The knot of anxiety was retying itself. Something had happened to her and he needed to know what it was.

"Curiosity killed the cat," he muttered to himself but it didn't stop him.

The rooftop was like any rooftop. He landed on the chimney with his baton extended in case he was going to need to fight his way out of some kind of trap. He was there early and there was no one else up there. There were no security cameras or guards. It wasn't even the type of rooftop with access. It was empty. It was just another building. He sat and waited but didn't let his guard down.

She landed below him. Landed badly. Her aim had been off and she hit the slant of roof and started to slide. He moved fast enough to grab her by the arm and swing her back onto the flat part of the rooftop. She swore and wobbled even there.

And she was wrong.

"Who are you?" he asked and his voice was even.

"Damn, you can tell? This whole plan hinges on people not being able to tell," she said.

Some sixth sense was there in the back of his head telling him that she wasn't an Akuma or someone in costume but she also wasn't Ladybug. Not his Ladybug. She was a little too tall and though the magic of the transformation made it hard for him to say what exactly it was that was off, something was. Her hair was wrong. Not long enough or dark enough. Her face didn't look right. He couldn't remember his Ladybug's exact features when she wasn't standing in front of him so he couldn't compare them but this was not the same person.

"Who are you?" he asked again and his voice wasn't as calm.

"Ladybug, well, not really, but I am today," she said.

"Is she dead?" he heard himself ask and it didn't feel like something Chat would ever say. It sounded like Adrien's voice from when he'd been little, when his mother had vanished. He kept his expression neutral but once the words were out the possibility that it was true hit him hard in the chest.

"Oh god, no! No," she said and waving her hands as though she could wave the idea away. Then once more as though she wasn't sure he'd heard her, "No."

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" he asked.

He leaned against his staff and considered this not-Ladybug. His panic had given way to curiosity and confusion. A lot of confusion. He kept looking at her like there was some answer in her, if he just found the right detail, he could unravel the entire puzzle.

"So M-my friend, who is Ladybug, which is still a little weird for me to say because isn't that ridiculous? But she is and she has these earrings and this little red blobby thing that's adorable and freaky and is maybe an alien and do you have one too?" she asked.

He was silent for a minute before he realized she meant the Kwami, "Yes," he said.

"Right, I guess you must because you're a regular person too. So weird," she said. Chat raised his eyebrows and tilted his head at her in a silent question and she straightened up a little.

"You know that Gala? It was a test. For a long time the conspiracy theorists on the internet have been saying that all you need to do to prove someone is Ladybug is take all your candidates out to the middle of no where and then send an Akuma after them. Of course in order to do that you need to be able to make Akuma and then kidnap young women, so most of these whack jobs on the blogs can't very well put that theory to the test. Except that's exactly what happened at that stupid fashion party."

"You're telling me that the reason that Akuma appeared so far away from Paris is because Hawkmoth sent it on purpose? He sent it after her?" Chat said.

"Clever kitty cat! Good job!" she said. She talked with her hands, flapping them around and pacing a little bit as she explained. He was on edge for when she slipped and fell off the roof again.

"Don't call me that, just tell me where she is," he said.

"Sitting at home, probably on her bed doing some kind of fancy project for her fancy job," she said.

"So she's fine," he said.

"Except for the invisible stalker, yeah," not-Ladybug said with a shrug.

"What?" he said harsher. She turned to him for a moment as though his tone had scared her. He tried to soften his expression but knew he was failing. .

"Tikki and I have a theory," she said going back to pacing and bouncing, "That when you showed up at that party, you threw off all the calculations the butterfly freak had made because if you could get there that fast then maybe she could as well. Her being there didn't prove that she was on the guest list, right? So now he wants to prove it for sure or just grab the earrings and run. There's something following her. It was waiting in her room when she got back from the big blue museum climbing monster battle. It had gone through all her stuff."

"Looking for the miracle stone," Chat said.

"Guess so, or a photo album labeled, 'My Adventures as Ladybug,' which you'd think is ridiculous but she used to keep a journal when she was younger so you know, she's a bit of an idiot herself sometimes. Now it's following her around, waiting for some kind of proof or to be able to steal her stone and run off home," she said.

"You have her stone," he pointed out waving a hand at her red suit.

"I do which is why we should probably get going because I'm not 'the chosen one' and so Tikki can only keep my transformation in place for about an hour and it hurts her to do it and we're going to run out of time," she said.

"How did you get her earrings?" Chat asked.

"She found the invisible thing in her room, came to my place instead, and conveniently forgot her bag on my sofa. Let me tell you, I had a heart attack when the apple with eyes climbed out of it. Sorry Tikki, you're not an apple. I'm just stressed. Can they hear you when you're transformed?" she asked.

"I honestly don't know," he said, "What's the plan that we're running out of time for?"

"Being seen publicly," not-Ladybug said, "You knew right away I wasn't her though, so maybe it won't work?"

"I know her better than most people," he said.

"Right. So public sighting is still a go? Where do we go and how do we get down?" she asked.

He ended up having to half carry her as they made the Eiffel Tower run. Most of the pictures that people had of Ladybug and Chat Noir that didn't come from an Akuma battle, came from this path. They ran it often. It was public and it was relatively well lit and took them along lower buildings that could be seen from people's windows and through parks where they could be seen by just about everyone. Chat also made a bit of a show of climbing up to the first level of crossbeams on the tower itself.

"Good enough?" he asked once they were there.

"That was awesome. Do you always go that fast?" she asked.

Chat laughed. He had been slowing it down to give her time to get her footing and to make sure there were lots of chances for people to notice them going by and get a picture. She was kicking her feet and leaning out to look at the city. He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back.

"I should have brought my phone. This is awesome. We need to do this again so I can take a selfie. I need a selfie of climbing the side of the Eiffel Tower with Chat Noir," she said.

He sighed.

"I don't even care that you're a sourpuss and you're all sad that your girlfriend isn't here. I got to climb the Eiffel Tower with Chat Noir. That's awesome," she said, "Next time I'm bringing my phone."

The miracle stone wasn't beeping but she started shifting like there were ants in her suit. She had fallen silent, which hadn't happened since she'd arrived on the roof and made him worry about her. She was going to lose the transformation and that would be a problem. He pulled her onto his back so that he could move fast and took them off down another boulevard where there wouldn't be as many people to notice them. He made a vault with the baton to skip from one block to the next and she screamed in his ear as they plummeted back to earth.

"You could get hit by a train in this suit and it would hurt the train more than it would hurt you. Even if I dropped you, you'd be fine. Please stop screaming," he told her once he'd put her down on the ground in an empty alley.

"That was so cool but, dude, if you drop me, I might have push you in front of a train just to test that theory, don't drop me," she said. She was unsteady on her feet.

"Will you be alright if I leave you to turn back or do you want me to stay?" he asked.

"You should go. I am under strict orders that you aren't to be told who she is," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because she's pretty sure that if you knew who she was and where to find her then you'd try and help and end up with the Akuma trailing you as well. She's already had to go into hiding, you need to be out doing heroic things because if you carrying me around Paris has proved anything, I sure as hell can't fill those shoes. Did you know Regular-Her falls up stairs and once sewed her own finger with a sewing machine? She had to go to the emergency room because she has the coordination of a drunk sloth. I love her but she's a klutz. Then I find out she regularly swings around Paris on a child's toy," she shook the yo-yo, "And saves peoples lives. It's mind boggling, really."

Chat laughed and his heart lurched in his chest to imagine his Ladybug as someone clumsy. His expression fell into something serious.

"Do something for me?" he asked, she nodded, "Make sure she knows that if she needs me, ever, for anything, she can come find me. She can show up at my door in the middle of the night in her civilian clothes if she needs to. My identity isn't more important than her safety. Ever."

"She's not going to go for that. Pretty sure you're more important to her than just about anything else but I'll pass it on," she said.

He stared at her.

"Yeah, she's not so good at sharing her feelings. She was in love with this boy at school for years and couldn't even look him in the eye without forgetting how words work but trust me, she has a bit of a thing for you. So sad for you though, means that she isn't going to come visit until we manage to convince her Akuma buddy to go the hell away. But we can do that, you and I," she said.

She elbowed him in the ribs like they were old friends and then turned and pushed her way through the nearest door. He hesitated a split second too long before opening it. He was looking at a short empty hallway. She'd already gone. He edged forward, ears swiveling but she must have pushed through into whatever was beyond the other door.

The door at the other end of the hall opened with a clatter and he pushed himself back into the shadows as a man in a messy chef's uniform pushed past carrying a bag of garbage and grumbling about idiot kids. The noise of a busy kitchen cut off as the door swung shut behind the chef. Chat kept his back flat to the wall until the man had dropped off the trash and then come back through again.

He told himself it was a good thing he'd lost the girl who wasn't Ladybug.

Because Ladybug was right.

He wasn't going to be able to stay away if he knew where she was and that she wasn't safe. He was less concerned with his own identity than he was by the prospect that he would be confirming for anyone watching that she was Ladybug and that would just put her in more danger. He told himself over and over and over as he walked home that this was for the best. And yet, not being able to reach her, not being able to help, felt too much like abandoning her for it to sit right.

When he was himself again he sent her a message that he knew wouldn't go through, "I'm right here if you need me."

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

The sewing your finger thing actually happened to a cosplayer friend of mine. I don't think the machine succeeded in going all the way through her finger but it made it through her nail and she needed to go to emergency. She almost didn't get her costume done in time for the con. I think she had to sew it while one of her fingers was bandaged up twice the size of the others and unbendable. Fun times and very Marinette.

Also, goddamn but I love writing Alya - yes it is Alya, I think that's obvious but if it isn't then let this be your confirmation - I love her exuberance and her immediate gear shift from "must discover Ladybug's identity" to "must lie and risk self and protect best friend's identity at all costs even from her boyfriend."

(The next chapter is going to be an extremely long phone calls with Alya that will hopefully fill in some of the questions of WHAT JUST HAPPENED if you've got such questions).


	24. The Ride Home

The winter show was approaching at a dead run. Everything was busy. Final fittings were in progress. The set was finished enough that they had done a walk through so Milo and the designers could throw a fit over ordering and who went first. The mock ups for everything going to print had been made but not finalized. It would have made going to work enough to give him an ulcer on the best of days. As it was, with his head full of worry, setting foot in the building mostly made him want to kill people.

He was running away from a meeting that had dragged on for an extra hour and hadn't even been about the models when he detoured past the design studios. There was a good chance that he was just going to run into Elijah and Stefan still having the same argument they had been having in the meeting room but there was also a small chance he would run into Marinette.

The studios were quiet and most of them dark behind the big glass partitions. Design's work slowed down as the show went from development into production. The active workshops weren't working on the runway lines, they'd be working on the department store productions or private commissions or Spring. With winter about to go on, Spring was already well into development. The higher-ups were working on the actual design of Summer and next Fall as well so they'd be ready when the next show dates were released.

He heard a sound as he went by the studio room where he'd bothered Marinette as Chat Noir. It was dark but he stuck his head inside. The Great Squirrel Invasion of 2013 had left everyone in the entire building with the near pathological need to make sure that any open window or unidentified sound did not lead to baby squirrels chewing their way through thousands of dollars of imported silk to build a nest.

He thought he caught a bit of movement by the window but when he looked again there was nothing there but winter sunshine. He shrugged and turned to leave the room and noticed her. She was sitting on the floor with her knees draw up and her back braced against a file cabinet. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at him with a weak smile.

"Marinette?" he said.

He moved faster than he had intended, swinging around a table and sitting down in front of her. She startled and looked at him with wide eyes. Her hair wasn't as neat as it usually was. The skin around her eyes was swollen. He reached out and pushed a piece of hair away from her face as she watched him.

"Marinette, what happened?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"You're crying in a dark room, something happened," he said.

"I just haven't been sleeping well, it's nothing," she said with a smile that was very well faked. If her cheeks weren't red and tear streaked, she would have looked perfectly happy.

"I can tell you with some experience that Design Studios aren't the best places to cry. Let me take you home," he said.

"That's very forward, Mr. Agreste," she said with a little giggle.

"I did tell you once that I was charming," he said.

Adrien stood up and held out his hand to her. She tilted her head back and hesitated before she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. She took her hand back immediately. She shoved her feet back into a pair of little pink shoes with low heels and picked up a jacket from a chair and shrugged into that as well.

"If you ask pressing questions then I will ask pressing questions too," he said.

"I don't understand," she said.

"I'm going to show you tricks for making sure that no one in your workplace can tell that you've been crying in empty offices. Those are my first choice but empty design studios don't change any of the principles," he said.

"No questions," she said.

"Good," he said.

Most of his crying in offices had happened when he was younger. Having an apartment to retreat to made it far easier than being eleven and abandoned in an office while some meeting took place next door. The worst had been the back to back shoots with strange call times that left him exhausted and frustrated. Sometimes it felt like those days were long gone. Sometimes it felt like he was the same lonely overwhelmed kid and he always would be.

Adrien wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her along to the sink in the back of the room so she could wash her face with cold water. He held a wet towel over her eyes. She was tense but smiled at him when he pulled it away. He knew she had blue eyes but for some reason they caught him by surprise. Her smile didn't reach those eyes and she looked sad and lost for a moment before she recollected herself and turned away from his stare.

"See? The cold helps get rid of the puffy blotchiness which is the biggest tell," he said.

"Thank you, but you don't need to fuss over me," she said.

"I don't do it out of the goodness of my heart, I fully expect you to return the favour the next time my life falls apart and I find myself sobbing in a corner," he said.

"That's not funny, your life is not falling apart," she said.

"It is, I just keep it well hidden. Let's go steal a car and a driver and I'll take you home," he said with a wink. He took her bag and her coat and she scampered after him a few steps to fall in beside him as he led the way to the elevator.

"Adrien?" she asked.

"The deal was no pressing questions," he said in answer to her tone more than what she had said.

"Fine so a general question then: Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yes. I was going for dramatic to distract you from your own worries," he said but she kept looking at him until he shrugged and added, "Girl problems."

"Ok," she said in a tone of voice that said she knew he was lying or at least not telling the entire truth. He leaned against the wall beside her so that his shoulder brushed hers and shrugged. She looked up at him and then away but she nudged him back. A silent agreement not to ask.

They borrowed a car and a driver. There was always someone just sitting in the little lounge just inside from the parking garage in case some important designer needed to be whisked away to some important meeting. This wasn't going to qualify on the important list but Adrien was prepared to pull rank if that's what it took. He wasn't putting her on a bus while she looked ready to pass out on her feet. Joe, the driver in question, didn't put up any argument. Either they were overstaffed or he just didn't care. He just shrugged and grabbed the keys.

Adrien held open the door for her and she smirked at him and ushered him in ahead of her. For a moment they both hesitated before Adrien bowed his head to her and climbed into the car first. She slid in beside him. He had been expecting her to sit across from him but she sat shoulder to shoulder like they had on the way home from the Gala. Neither of them talked and before they'd gone two blocks in the late afternoon traffic, she had slumped over and fallen asleep against his shoulder.

He smiled at her and pushed the buzzer for the driver. The little divider slid down and Adrien could see the side of Joe's head.

"If I gave you a really big tip and came up with a creative lie for the accountants, would you be willing to drive around for an hour?" he asked.

"Sure, kid," Joe said.

"Thank you," Adrien said.

"Uh huh," Joe said and he hit the button to slide the divider back up leaving Adrien alone with Marinette sleeping against his arm. He slid a little lower in his seat her head was against his shoulder and then answered all his email while she slept. It was like being trapped in a bubble where the rest of the world was very far away.

It didn't make him worry less. Every other thought was still about Ladybug but it helped push everything else away. A part of him wanted to shake Marinette awake and tell her absolutely everything as though confession would fix anything. He couldn't do that so instead he let her sleep. At least one of them deserved the rest.

When the hour he'd negotiated out of the driver was up and they finally pulled up in front of the dorm, he woke her up gently. She blinked at him but didn't seem to be able to pull herself all the way out of sleep, he wondered how long it had been that she hadn't been sleeping. She had seemed fine at the Gala but that was nearly a week ago.

"Just pass me your key, I'll take you up to your room," he said.

She narrowed her eyes then yawned. She dug a key card on a string out of her shoulder bag. He looped it around his wrist and considered her for a moment. He climbed out the other door and rather than forcing her awake, he just picked her up.

"Hey," she said

She didn't ask him to put her down and that seemed like proof that there was something wrong. Marinette was independent almost to a fault and he was a little wary of touching her. She didn't always seem to like it but she had gone from freaking out when he brushed her hand to falling asleep on his shoulder. He wouldn't have thought she'd let him pick her up but here she was, half asleep with her head resting on his chest.

He managed to wave the key card at her door enough times to make the lock click open. It was a closet of a room. Two beds, two desks, two dressers, all in made out of that white plastic covered wood. The roommate was not there. He guessed that the bed with the pile of sketchbooks and a flip-book of fabric samples on the side table was hers. He laid her down on it.

He turned around and went back to swing the door shut. He had been sure he had kicked it shut behind them but it mustn't have latched. He grabbed a folded quilt, the most personal thing on Marinette's side of the room, and threw it over her.

Marinette, Mari," he said making her turn to him and blink.

"You need to stay home tomorrow," he said.

"No, I've missed too much work already, the afternoon of the Gala, the day after, I've missed too much," she said.

"You're exhausted," he said.

"You're nice," she said.

"Now I'm worried that you're drunk," he said.

She smiled and pulled her pillow in so she could bury her face in it. He was crouched down beside bed so he was level with her. He had to catch his fingers before they reached out and pushed the hair back from her face.

"I'm not drunk," she muttered, "I just meant that I'm glad you're here. You're kinder than you need to be and not everyone is. Thank you."

He sat back on his heels and tried to think of something to say to that. She turned back towards him, looking out from her hair for a moment before she clumsily pushed it back from her face. Her hand hovered for a moment before she touched the back of his where it still rested on the mattress.

"Can you stay for a minute? Just until I fall sleep again?" she asked.

"Yeah, Princess, I can do that," he said.

She gave him a sleepy smile but her eyes were already fluttering shut. If she noticed that he'd called her Princess, she didn't say anything. That was the kind of thing that Chat Noir said to her, not the kind of thing that Adrien said. She had curled her fingers around his hand and he turned his palm over and held her hand until her breathing turned deep and even.

Then just a little bit longer.

* * *

 **Notes:**

Holy tropey shippy Adrienette, Batman.

:)

Also I haven't decided if Joe abandoned Adrien there to make his own way home or if he is still just sitting down in front of the dorms in a fancy town car reading trashy magazines behind the tinted windows and working out how big a tip he can get out of the Agreste kid.

I think I'll leave that one for you to decide.

(And yes, calling the driver Joe is another Princess Diaries reference.)

And an apology for the lack of updates. I'm not a regular user of this site and so I sometimes forget to update over here. If you follow me at ashesandhoney on tumblr I post the AO3 updates as they go up. I will also try to do better and get caught up over here as well.


	25. The Photoshoot

Adrien avoided everything in his life that wasn't essential. Half of the Parisian media was still buzzing with the fact that an Akuma had attacked so far outside the city and the other half was buzzing about the fact that there were pictures of Ladybug kissing Chat Noir. Everyone was on edge because it had been almost a week since there had been an attack. Adrien was too anxious to face any of it. He had made it through five days of compulsive worry and it was wearing on him.

He had now added worrying about Marinette to his collection of things to stress about. She had fallen asleep holding his hand and he had stayed there for a long time, sitting on the floor by her bed and watching her sleep. He had finally slipped away in the late afternoon after missing another horrible meeting that was supposed to have started at 2pm.

He continued on with his life until Ladybug reached out again or an Akuma attacked or something changed. He went to work, he went to class. At night he patrolled rooftops and empty streets and all the places he could remember ever going with her in case he might find her or her doppleganger in one of them. He avoided going back to work unless it was essential because it was harder to hide there than it was at school. It even worked for a few days but on Thursday he had an actual appointment for a fitting and found himself trapped in a studio with the rest of the runway team.

Adrien was almost able to behave normally. It was all an act and it felt like a very thin veneer between his normal behaviour and his constantly churning worry but no one seemed to notice. He laughed with the others as Liam made a show of his status as an Akuma victim. Liam seemed to find it funny in retrospect and had set a picture of his monstrous self as the background on his phone.

"You're finally here!" a voice said and Adrien looked up to see Milo. Incongruously, Milo's voice brought up memories of that phone call from the morning he had woken up with Ladybug and Adrien barely managed to smile at him.

"What can I do for you?" Adrien asked.

"Come with me!" Milo said grabbing him by the arm and hauling him out of the studio and into an office across the hall. Milo was a tiny New Yorker who talked with his hands and couldn't always stick to a language. His French became English and then his English became Italian and then he was using American slang that didn't make sense to the rest of the world even if they did speak English.

Milo was lead on the winter line. It was an unusual position which left him in charge of coordinating everything that wasn't the actual creation of clothing. He had to manage magazine spreads and runways and interviews. The line had to have a consistent 'image' across all platforms and Milo created that. He had to wrangle web developers and graphic designers. He didn't do any of the work, he just made sure it all got done. No one doubted that it took a lot of effort. He was a tornado of a human being and spending more than fifteen minutes in his immediate presence was exhausting.

He was talking about promotional photographs at a speed that would have been difficult to follow even without the switch to Italian when he tried to explain his vision. Adrien spoke three languages and was working on a fourth. None of them were Italian.

"Milo, I don't understand. What was that about Marinette? What are you talking about?" Adrien said.

"No! You don't understand, I need a promo shot, something to lead with," Milo said.

"No, I understand that, I don't understand what Marinette has to do with it," Adrien said.

"Have you seen the pictures from your little prank shoot?" Milo said and before Adrien could answer, he was barreling on, "They're hot. You are hot in general, don't get me wrong on that but you're usually pretty terrible at doing hot with someone. We've been trying for years to train you into it but no, put someone else in the shot and you get all stilted. I don't even know what it is, it isn't any one thing. You're just not right. I want to sell a little more sex with this line and your father has decided that you're going to lead it. Nepotism at it's finest. And usually I would be annoyed. In fact, I was annoyed. It would have been easier to sell sex with Pietro who basically oozes sex, he's a little gross in person but it photographs well."

"Milo, you're rambling," Adrien said.

"But then I saw those shots of you and the little black haired girl and well, you can do sexy apparently, you just won't do it for any shoot I have managed in the last how ever many years since you hit puberty. Wouldn't have thought it was possible but good on you, kiddo. So I go find Parvana and I say, 'Where did these shots on the shared drive come from? Who is she? Have you already sold the pictures?' and I find out it was a prank shoot with the goddamn interns. She's not even a modeling intern. She's in design," Milo flapped his hands as he talked.

"It was just us messing around," Adrien said.

"Right, good, fine, then I want you to mess around for me, wearing the winter line and with proper lighting," Milo said.

"No," Adrien said, "Don't drag her into this, I can do the shoot with just about anyone else."

"Experience has taught us all that that is a lie," Milo said, "You can do awkward and posed with other people. I want you to actually look like you want to eat her and the only picture I have ever seen where you were looking at anyone like that was that girl. Which leads me to believe that it is the girl, not the clothing or the photographer or the set up of the shoot or anything else I can control. So we bring the girl. She doesn't need to do anything. She just needs to stand around and let you stare at her with that almost drooling, hungry look on your face. Mmmmkay?"

And then Milo had spun on his heel and swanned off down the hall and left Adrien staring after him in frustration. When he found Marinette at lunch, she had already been roped into the idea and spent half the meal telling him how much fun it would be to see a proper photoshoot from the inside. She was still a little quiet and a little distant but she seemed genuinely excited about it. He suspected that none of the words hungry, drooling or oozing had been used while suggesting the idea to her. Milo had set the shoot for the next day and that wasn't helping with Adrien's plans to wiggle his way out of it.

He did not want to deal with promotional shoots while his head was full of everything else. He wanted the rest of his life to be quiet so he could put all his attention on figuring out how he could be helpful to Ladybug.

He failed to figure out a way out of it. He hadn't come up with an excuse that would get him out of it and calling in sick was out of the question because it would have left Marinette alone with Milo's ideas and whoever he chose as a stand-in, probably the oozy Pietro. Adrien was not prepared to abandon her to that.

They used one of the penthouse studios, it was set as an office which just made the entire thing feel a little more dirty. It wasn't unlike his father's office and he was going to need to push that thought out of his head if he was going to survive this shoot. Usually he didn't care. It was just a matter of putting on the show and letting them take his picture until something turned out the way they wanted it to.

He did not get stage fright.

Ever.

Except for today.

She was wearing her pink dress from the gala and a pair of ballet flats. Her hair had been swept up from her face and then let down in a cascade of curls over her shoulders. She wasn't a model but you could only tell in how she carried herself. She was beautiful. He was wearing one of the suits from the line. Plain black, very carefully tailored but beyond some interesting buttons, it was just a suit. He looked like a model. A pretty rack on which to hang clothing.

"They let you wear your dress," he said.

"Hips," she reminded him patting one.

He smiled but didn't say anything inappropriate about her hips or her legs or the way the muscles in her arms moved when she handed him a flower that matched the colour of her dress. She wasn't his. He had made his choice. His choice was currently in danger and alone while he was here with the flashbulbs and make up and too many people.

The shoot was going to kill him and the first few shots were just that awkward. The photographer obviously blamed it on Marinette and kept adding direction for her to try and keep straight. She was faced away from the camera and the rest of the crew and only Adrien saw her annoyance. She was still and stilted and looked like she wanted to run. He caught her face between his hands and her eyes got wide.

"The trick is to ignore everyone," he said.

"Is it?" she asked.

"Yes, even if it's a solo shoot and you're supposed to be looking at the camera, you ignore the people, people are just distracting," he whispered. There were probably people on the set who heard him but he was doing his very best to follow his own advice. Just be a model. Be a professional, get it over with and then he could get back to everything that mattered.

Marinette laughed and that made him bolder. This he could do. He could get her through this without letting them make her uncomfortable. He pulled her in another step and she let one of her hands fall to his chest. Milo was off in the corner calling out various bits of direction and Adrien did his very best to keep it from catching Marinette's attention. He put his hands where he was told but he kept her attention on him. She laughed as he made jokes, she shook her head at him when they were bad. As she relaxed, so did he.

He picked her up and spun her around and she braced her hands on his shoulders to stay balanced. She laughed in surprise and Milo made an annoyed noise from where he sat in a corner. The photographer shushed him. Adrien was aware of the camera flicking but when he put her back down she leaned in to rest her forehead on his shoulder like Ladybug sometimes did and that erased every other thought. Looking down at her, her hair all black ink spread across pale shoulders, she could have been his Lady and that derailed everything else.

"Don't lose that look but try for a smile," Milo called out.

"What look?" she asked lifting her head to look at him. He'd leaned in so they were nose to nose. It was almost a kiss. He stopped himself before he kissed her but the last time he'd been this aware of the space between himself and another person he had been sitting in the belfry of Notre Dame with a girl in a red suit. His hands on Marinette's waist tightened as he stopped himself from doing it.

Wrong girl.

Don't kiss girls just because they remind you someone.

He shook that thought out of his head.

He liked Marinette. That wasn't so strange but somehow liking Marinette had become something else when he wasn't looking. He wasn't even sure anymore when it had started. She had been just an old classmate then a new friend and somewhere along the line he'd started looking forward to seeing her and now this thrill at having her so close. He had kissed her forehead at the Gala, he'd spent a lot of money on tipping a limo driver just to drive her around while she slept, now he was about to kiss her properly. What had happened to being friends?

He took a step back and then turned and walked out of the room. Milo was yelling behind him but he didn't turn to look at either of them. He was so unnerved and he just needed to be away from the entire situation.

* * *

He stood in a room across the hall. It was another studio. This one had unfinished floors and a rack of lighting but nothing else. It was ready to be built into a full set but right now it just looked abandoned. He leaned against the window. The glass was cold, it was still early but December and outside Paris was bright but gray. He heard the door and tried to prepare himself for the excuses he was going to have to give to Milo or the photographer or whoever had been elected to follow after him. It wasn't any of them.

It was Marinette.

Marinette in that short pink dress that was so perfectly her. Her eyebrows were drawn together and she crossed her arms and then uncrossed them as she stood in the doorway. He didn't say anything because he'd forgotten what he wanted to say. She made some decision and started towards him. She turned back and frowned at the door which hadn't shut all the way and closed it behind her with a little sigh.

"Mari," he said but it derail his thoughts. Where did he get the impression that they were close enough for him to use a nickname? No one called her by a nickname. Not even Alya. Adrien had never heard her called anything but Marinette and here he was throwing nicknames at her like she was someone else.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"No," he said.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

She was being so nice but he couldn't quite get a hold on his feelings. He had been in emotional free fall since Ladybug's phone had rang through to nothing. Worry, anger, heartbreak, love. It was welling inside him and had been for days. Marinette and her hand in his hair had opened up floodgates.

"I think you're probably not the best person for me to be talking to right now," he said.

"Why?" she asked with a little snort and a half smile like it was a joke.

"Because I almost kissed you," he said.

"Milo would have had a fit of joy if you had," she said.

"There's model kissing and actual kissing. I was going to actually kiss you," he said in a frank and even voice like he was pointing out the weather or the colour of her dress.

"Adrien?" she said sounding almost alarmed.

"I'm making a mess of everything, even this," he said.

"It's fine. You haven't ruined anything. They're all in there eating those little sandwiches, no one cares. Apparently Nadine has once threw a chair in a diva fit. You're perfectly reasonable as far as they're all concerned," she rambled through the words as fast as Milo did. She laughed but it wasn't a real laugh. She was giving him an out, a way to let this conversation go without having to talk about it.

His heart broke a little and he hated himself for it. This was the best case scenario. He was in love with someone else and if she wasn't interested, that made it easy. They could go back to being friends and he could relearn what normal boundaries were. He needed to stop falling in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Some echo of that thought must have shown on his face because she frowned and reached out a hand. He took it and pulled her in so she was close enough to hug but the only place he touched her was her hand.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No," she said and he could almost see another rush of words building and then she'd do that awkward adorable thing where she talked too fast and only looked at him in little flashes. She was smiling and getting ready to laugh it off again. He couldn't seem to take the offer. It was his heart was an open wound. He hadn't talked about his feelings for so long and now he didn't know how to turn the flow of words off.

"I need to stop," he said and her face fell into confusion. He was the one rambling now. "It isn't you. You're one of the best friends I have made in years. I am so happy to have gotten to know you these past few months but I need more space. I need to stop giving myself chances to think about you like this. You're perfect and you deserve so much better."

"Adrien," she said and this time it was the start of a sentence, something serious and measured and he shook his head and rushed on before she could say anything that shattered his heart.

He couldn't decide what would be worse: if she liked him or if she didn't.

"Please don't say anything. There are only two things to say to the idiot who tells you something like that. You'll either break my heart or I'll break yours. I am a selfish bastard. Here I am telling you that I want to kiss you but I am in love. I am the kind of in love that you don't recover from. I've been in love with this girl since I was fourteen and if I live that long I will be in love with her when I'm a hundred and fourteen. She's my everything," he said.

He stopped and let his eyes fall shut as he retreated a few steps before he attempted to look at her. She was staring at him with a partially open mouthed stare. He sighed and was hit by such a wave of embarrassment and anxiety that he wanted to cry. He didn't. He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her one of his very fake but very charming model smiles.

"And now that I've ruined probably the first really good friendship I have made in years, I'm going to leave. I am sorry, Mari," Adrien said. He bit his tongue but didn't take the nickname back. He forced a smile and then turned and left. He didn't stop to apologize to Milo. He did stop to put the suit back and then he transformed and headed out into the city to run until he was too tired to think.

* * *

Notes:

Oh my god, Adrien why can't you stop talking. She gave you every imaginable chance to get out of that without saying it but no you just kept on declaring your love for everyone. Oh my god.

In other news, I love this chapter and awkward lovesick not-dealing-well-with-his-feelings-until-they-blow-up-in-his-face Adrien is my favourite.

I also love Milo and he is one of my favourite OCs ever.


End file.
